Gone
by nericearren
Summary: He slept at the cape, mostly, wrapped up in a thousand blankets and waiting for summer to come back. Waiting for Percy, to come back with it.
1. Waiting

_a/n-I am posting the first chapter on Nico's birthday. I am posting the first chapter on Nico's birthday. If you do not appreciate the total awesomeness of this, seriously get out._

_ Anyway, here, have a seaside romance that was unasked for. I hope you guys like it!_

Widows who lost their husbands to the sea used to waste away on the beach, staring out, half with longing, half with despair, at the waves that had stolen their love away. Nico had lived on the New York coast for long enough to hear the tales of Wailing Sarah and Mad Charlotte; of the Lighthouse Keeper's Second Wife and the Nameless Lover who drowned mere months after losing her betrothed to the same ocean. They were the kind of sad, mournful stories that his sister Bianca would have loved-she had always been more enchanted with the idea of romance than the actual thing.

Nico was different. Nico hated the legends, hated every word and name and place they contained. He didn't see the kind of beauty he was sure that Bianca would have-all he saw was the immense suckiness of life after you lost everything that was precious to you. He liked stories with happy endings, where the heroes won and everyone went for coffee at the end, even the bad guys.

He slept at the cape, mostly, wrapped up in a thousand blankets and waiting for summer to come back to the coast. The sky was always gray, the sea choppy and uninviting. The drafty cape house was never warm enough, and the salt-soaked wood wheezed in protest every time the wind blew, and all of the pipes froze sometime in October and he was forced to get water from the ancient pump well in the backyard and heat it up on the gas stove. There was no electricity. He had to hike down the cliff to the beach to use the toilet at the surf shack, which he only kept heated out of sheer stubbornness to not leave the sea.

He wasn't some sea-robbed widow, anyway. He wasn't lovelorn or desperate or wasting away, or anything that romantic. He just stayed at the cape because someone had to. Even if everybody else had long since left, he knew that someone had to stay behind. Someone had to wait for Percy.


	2. A Boy

The strangers came to town at the beginning of November, when it was getting truly cold and Nico went around with not-quite-frostbitten ears and numb toes most of the time, except in the surf shack, which was where he met the first of the newcomers.

The boy came in at three, just as Nico was about to close up for the day, ducking in through the door and bringing the frigid wind with him. It lingered for a second too long after the door was shut, and Nico, who had shed his bulky coat and two sweaters as soon as he'd gotten in that morning, shivered in his shirtsleeves. The boy looked at him apologetically.

He was taller than Nico by at least a foot and a half, if not more; bulky like a football player, with short blond hair and a wide smile. He looked a little too . . . _all-American_ . . . for Nico's taste, but his eyes-a marbled blue like the sky on a sailing day-reminded him of his own cousin, Thalia. "I'm looking for hand warmers. And blankets. And pretty much every other damn thing you have to help us crazy tourists keep warm," he said, that smile never wavering, even in the face of Nico's death-warmed-over appearance and impassive stare.

In summer, the shack sold surfboards and wax and sunscreen, and a few emergency supplies in the back with the life preservers and safety jackets, but when the weather turned cold, Nico had stocked it with dried foods, thermal blankets, and lots of other things he ordered off of a wilderness survival site. The extra products had been just enough to keep the store afloat during the slow season.

The boy bought six blankets, Nico's entire stock of hand warmers, two emergency kits, and a bottle of Coke. He paid in quarters that he dug out of his pockets in agonizing slowness. "Sorry," he muttered, sheepishly pushing the handful of change across the counter. "This sort of was an . . . unexpected trip."

Nico made a polite noise of disinterest and counted up the change. Somehow, the boy seemed to think this was encouragement to go on.

"I have this friend who's looking for her brother," the boy said, his blue eyes following Nico's fingers as they stacked quarters in neat dollar piles on the counter. "He's supposed to be around here, I guess? Anyway, Hazel-that's my friend-she sort of coerced Frank-uh, that's another friend of ours-to take her on this road trip. And I went after them, but I wasn't prepared at all and . . . well, here I am."

Nico hummed another non-reply and shut the cash drawer. "Sixteen cents is your change." He handed the trio of coins over.

"You wouldn't happen to know of a guy around here with a sister, would you?" the boy asked, and gave a sorry kind of laugh, sheepishly running a broad hand through his hair. "I guess that's kind of a broad criteria."

"There aren't any guys around here," Nico retorted. "Everyone left for the summer."

"You didn't," the boy replied. Nico didn't answer.


	3. Jason

The guy was back the next day, this time for Mallowmars and a half-gallon of milk. "We're renting the gable house up on the cliff," he said, and Nico tried not to look surprised. They were neighbors, more or less; the house the boy was talking about was only a ten minute walk from Nico's own.

"You're staying?" he asked, not sure why he cared. Crazy tourists on crazy impromptu quests-none of his business.

"We have to find Hazel's brother," the boy said, so full of earnestness and wide-eyed optimism that Nico wanted to puke. "I'm Jason, by the way." He stuck out his hand over the counter.

Nico stared at it and arched one eyebrow. Jason laughed. "Usually, you're supposed to just shake it. Cool eyebrow trick, though."

It had been a long time since someone had laughed at his attitude. Nico didn't like it.

Jason leaned on the counter, making it clear he wasn't going anywhere, and said, "You're supposed to give me your name, now."

"Nico." It was habit, built in from years of his sister prompting him to introduce himself, lecturing him on proper manners, telling him-again and again-that if he never learned to be social, he'd never get a boyfriend.

"That sounds foreign," Jason said. Prying. All people pried; it was a fact. It was impossible, or nearly impossible, to have a conversation _without_ someone prying, under the guise of being polite. That was the main reason Nico had stopped talking to people, long before he'd taken up with his self-imposed solitude. Still, he found himself giving the boy the information he was asking for.

"I'm half Italian. I moved here when I was eight."

"Dude, _awesome_," Jason said, sounding like he really did think that was awesome. He kind of struck Nico as the type of guy who got unnaturally enthusiastic about things like Pop Tarts and meeting new people. "Can you, like, speak Italian?"

Nico gave him the same response he gave every person who asked him that dumb question-a long line of Italian curses that basically insulted the hearer, the hearer's family, the hearer's pets, and the Chinese food guy that never had an order ready on time.

"Now teach me what it means," Jason commanded, and then laughed. "You probably just cussed me out or something, right?"

"Right," Nico said, but it was getting harder and harder to not be drawn into conversation. The boy was so animated, it was like being pulled into a tide.

It had been a long time since Nico had felt like _that_.

They both stuck around the shack for long enough that it was evident they were making excuses to stay, but when the sun started to go down, Nico had to give it up. "I have to go."

"My friends are probably worried," Jason admitted. "But, hey, you should come over for dinner." He paused. "We haven't really settled in, so it might be canned salmon, but you should still come."

"I eat salmon," Nico said.

He shut off the lights and locked the door, and Jason helped him unroll the shutters over the two wide windows, sliding sand giving way under their sneakered feet so that their walk was as rollicking as if they were at sea.

Nico followed Jason off the beach, up the dirt path and through the woods and out again, all the way to where the nest of beach houses sat spaced out, all of them locked up and abandoned except two.

Jason's house still had electricity, and heat, and Nico nearly sighed in relief as he stepped inside. The wind still bruised the walls and seeped in through cracks, but it was hardly noticeable when there was a fire crackling in the grate and a curly-haired girl coming out from the kitchen with the words, "I've made spaghetti," on her lips.

It didn't feel like home, exactly, but it reminded him of summer.

"Ah, this is Hazel," Jason said, gesturing to the girl. "Hazel, this is Nico. He works down at the surf shack."

Nico ducked his head. He felt too salt-crusted and rusty to smile, but Hazel beamed at him anyway and took his cold hands in hers. "You look skinny," she said reproachfully. "Come on into the kitchen, and we'll get you a proper meal."

Hazel gave him a big bowl of spaghetti and sat him down at the wooden kitchen table. Her eyes-brown and wide-reminded him of Bianca's. She smiled a lot, but it never really took to her face, hanging there like a lopsided wall decoration. She asked lots of questions, just like Jason had. Nico had forgotten how much people liked to talk.

"I live in the cape," he said when she asked, and she nodded once and pursed her lips. He felt the need to add, "It isn't usually empty. My friends are coming back."

"When?" she asked.

He twirled strands of thick spaghetti around his fork, and shrugged.

"You seem awfully young," she pressed, and Nico looked up sharply.

"How old are you?" he retorted. There was that smile again-a little too tight, a little too shadowed.

"I'm sixteen," Hazel said. A year older than him; hardly in a position to be lecturing him about his choices, especially considering what Jason had told him about this half-assed trip.

"Don't grill him, Haz," Jason said, sitting down next to Nico and giving him a reassuring grin. _His_ smile was all-too-believable. "He came for a meal, not the third degree."

Hazel sat down, too, but her wide eyes never left the pale boy sitting across from her. "I'm just curious," she defended herself, and then raised her voice. "Frank, for heaven's sake, come in and get your food."

A boy-taller than Jason, and nearly twice as broad-lumbered into the room. Big as he was, he looked at Nico nervously, as if afraid the shorter boy would bite.

"Aaand, finally making an appearance," Jason said good-naturedly, "our boy, Frank."

Frank seemed even more antsy than Nico felt, and busied himself with his bowl of spaghetti almost immediately, sitting down next to Hazel as if expecting her to protect him.

"Frank, this is Nico. He's our neighbor," she said. She reached over with a napkin and wiped splattered sauce off of Frank's chin. He turned bright red.

Jason winked at Nico. "Frank's had a crush on Hazel for ages, and she's pretending she doesn't know."

Frank spluttered and Nico, to everyone's surprise-including his own-laughed.


	4. Starting Fires

The cape was cold when he returned to it. Nobody had returned.

Nico wasn't one to sit around feeling sorry for himself. For the first time since summer, he kindled a fire in the main room; digging out dry wood from the box by the door, pulling the well-used tinder box from its place on the mantlepiece. He had to stand on a chair to get to the silver container, tucked out of reach behind an ancestral urn and a statue of a hawk. He remembered Percy retrieving the box every night, before every fire, using his stupid lanky height to reach things that Nico, still in the five foot zone, could not.

He lay out the supplies, just like Percy used to, closed his eyes and breathed in the smell of ash and must and chocolate, preserved in the tinder box from its last use. He could almost hear Percy's girlfriend, Annabeth, scolding them to be careful, and Bianca's bright laughter as she recounted-for the thousandth time-how Nico nearly burned down their house once because he wanted to recreate a scene from Transformers with his Monster Truck. He could almost feel the brush of a warm hand against his as they both reached into the box at the same time.

_"Why can't I start the fire tonight?"_

_ "Maybe when you're older, little dude."_

"I'm older now," Nico muttered rebelliously, and opened his eyes. He picked out a few pieces of tinder, scattering them among the twigs in the fireplace. It only took a few strikes on the flintstone to ignite the small pile, and before long he was adding bigger and bigger logs to the blaze.

The fire was the most life that the cape had seen since August. Nico drew closer to it, sitting on the floor with his back resting against the coffee table, and wrapped a blanket around his knees.

That last night, it had been Percy's birthday. Annabeth had played "Ring of Fire" and they'd all been drunk enough to think it was a good idea to play it on repeat, again and again and again. The fire had burned twice as high as it ever had, and Percy's brother Tyson, who was visiting from college, started waltzing with himself in the middle of the living room. Nico had been happy.

He stayed watching the flames until they had burned out and the sun peeked over the horizon, turning the black sky gray. He saw only the past; heard only the echoes of words spoken long ago. The sirens in the distance were nothing but background noise.


	5. The Intern

"Frank's in the hospital!" Jason cried. Nico had seen him pacing in front of the shack from yards away, the shock of blond hair and bright green sweatshirt like a neon sign against the pale sand, pale sky, gray sea.

"He is?" Nico moved past Jason, inserting his key into the door lock. Jason ran both of his hands through his hair. "Hazel's with him now; he collapsed last night. I went looking for you."

If there had been pounding on his door, Nico had ignored it. Or maybe he hadn't heard it. He wasn't sure. He was tired from lack of sleep, and fighting the urge to tell Jason to screw off. Frank's well-being was none of his concern. "I wasn't home last night," he said. It was only half of a lie.

Jason rattled car keys in his hand. "Well, you're here now, so come on. Let's go."

"Go?"

"To the hospital," Jason said impatiently. "Frank needs his friends right now."

Nico blinked. "I'm not his-"

"Come _on_," Jason interrupted him, grabbing his arm and dragging him away from the shack. Nico stumbled in the sand, crashing into Jason's broad back, and the taller boy seized him by the hood of his parka and uprighted him, not pausing in his beeline to where the sand faded off into the pavement of the parking lot. He piloted Nico to the only car in the lot, an old Ford Taurus with a lot of scrapes and a missing hub cap.

The inside was littered with McDonald's bags and Burger King boxes, which Jason brushed impatiently aside before starting the engine. Nico hesitantly climbed into the passenger seat, and Jason pulled out of the lot before either of them had locked a seat belt in place.

Nico might have worried about kidnapping, but he didn't. Instead, he just watched the dunes fade into scrub and the occasional stand of trees. The nearest town-a tourist trap named Bath-was only a few miles away, just far enough to not be visible from anywhere but the roof of the cape, the highest point in the area. It only took fifteen minutes to get there by car, and in a short span of time, the Taurus was pulling onto Main St., Bath.

Bath was a small town, even by Long Island standards. There was one road for houses, one for tacky shops, and one for the state facilities-post office, school, town hall, and hospital. That was it. Jason pulled onto State Rd and nearly crashed into a car that was parked in a handicapped spot outside of the town hall. Correcting himself, he resumed his breakneck speed until they reached the St. Cross Hospital and Hospice.

Nico fumbled with his seatbelt, eager to get out of the madman-piloted car, legs shaky as he stepped out onto solid ground in relief.

Jason was already sprinting up the hospital steps, one-two-three at a time, and Nico had no choice but to follow, no matter how much he hated St. Cross, with its bleach-scrubbed halls and rooms with natty pink and green blankets, smelling of medicine and iodine and death.

Later, when Jason and Hazel were nodding somberly and the doctor was throwing around words like "remission" and "radiotherapy" and "carcinoma", Nico sat in a chair with his hands clasped between his knees. He was sweating in his bulky parka, but he didn't dare take it off for fear of losing the one good coat he had. The waiting room smelled like peppermints. The magazines on the table in front of him were all crap, and the cautionary pamphlets freaked the hell out of him. He knocked one combat boot against the heel of his other, twined his fingers together and separated them, looked up, and saw the intern staring at him.

He was blond, like Jason, but his hair was longer and curly, twisted back at the nape of his neck for efficiency. He didn't look old enough to be volunteering at a hospital, but his scrubs and name tag said differently. He was carrying a plate of cookies, and wearing battered DCs, which couldn't be standard protocol.

Nico looked at him.

He looked back, gaze as blue as the ocean that had stolen Percy away.

"My-someone I know is sick," Nico said stupidly. He laced his fingers together and muttered, "I hate hospitals."

The intern offered him a cookie off of the plate. "Everyone hates hospitals, sunshine. Heck, _I_ hate hospitals, and I work here. Sort of. Anyway, I'm sure your friend will be better soon."

Nico bit into a cookie. "I'm not so sure."

The intern snorted. "Points for optimism."


	6. With Hazel

"I'm going to be optimistic," Hazel told him, the smile on her face every bit as forced as it had been since the first moment he'd met her. She browsed idly though the rows of fake flowers. "He went into remission once-it can happen again."

Nico refrained from pointing out that Frank's chances of survival would be higher if he had kept up with his treatments, instead of running off to the seaside in the middle of winter.

"And it's only been a week," she went on. "We need to be patient." As if it was Nico who had been on edge for a week, showing up at his door every day with a new question, new worry. He didn't know why Hazel turned to _him_ for support; he just knew that she did, and he felt compelled to give it, even if the idea of him helping anyone was ironic.

Nico picked out a few plastic hydrangeas.

"Not those, they make Frank sneeze," Hazel said testily.

Nico cocked an eyebrow. "They're fake, Haz."

She blushed, set down the handful of flowers she was picking out, and scrubbed at her face with her sleeve. "I knew that," she muttered, clenching her free hand around the hem of her sweatshirt.

He looked away, and pretended not to notice the fresh tears spiking in her eyes.


	7. Winter Happened

December rolled around; snow fell. Jason tried to convince Nico to move to the gable, where it was warmer, but he refused. He liked the cape, even if the rooms were haunted and drafty.

Frank came back, a little thinner but otherwise unchanged. He went up to Bath every Saturday; none of them mentioned it. Hazel baked a lot of cookies and Jason told stories about the orphanage the three of them had grew up in, and Nico listened politely while he played cards with Frank. He was starting to care about them, in his own, funny way.

For Christmas, Frank and Jason cut down a tree from Nico's backyard and hauled it back to the gable, and since none of them had decorations, they made paper chains out of newsprint and hung stale granola bars and empty shipping cartons from the surf shack as ornaments. They all agreed it was the ugliest Christmas tree any of them had seen. Hazel took pictures.

Nico went down to the beach, picking his way through the coat of snow that blanketed the sand and standing at the very edge of the surf. He threw ice chunks into the water instead of rocks and remembered Christmases spent at Percy's apartment, the two of them-sometimes more, depending on the year-crammed on a mattress on the floor of Percy's closet-sized room, watching movies on the tiny box TV until Nico couldn't keep his eyes open any longer, waking up to Christmas music and presents for everyone, no matter how tight money was for the Jackson family. His father was never in any of those memories, but sometimes Thalia's dad was, or one of Percy's string of stepfathers.

Nico threw a lot of ice, and wished the ocean could feel pain. "Send him back," he told it listlessly. "I know he's great and you love him, but send him back when you're done."

Then it was New Year's, and Thalia was there.


	8. Thalia

She came into the surf shack just before it closed, much as Jason had. Nico was only a little surprised to see her. She had a way of coming and going as she pleased, even if she was only seventeen.

Thalia looked him up and down. "You're skinny." Her voice was a little hoarser, as if she'd spent most of the past four months screaming at a rock concert, or smoking a pack a day. Knowing Thalia, either was possible.

"You don't look so hot, either," he retorted. He wondered where she was living these days, if she was still seeing Zoe or if she'd moved on to the next girl by now. He wondered if she missed Percy, and then thought that she must have, because she was here. "I was just closing."

Thalia wandered around the two small aisles, eyeing him every now and again over the shoulder-height shelves. She trailed her fingers over the products; the plastic bags of ponchos, the reflective silver blankets, the compact mess kits scattered among the tins of surfboard wax. She fingered a fire-truck red safety whistle, and looked at him again.

"Am I keeping you?" Thalia never said "sorry". Nico was used to that. He didn't apologize either.

"Yeah." He also didn't lie, not to his cousins.

Thalia dug in the pocket of her oversized wool coat, pulling out a lighter and a pack of cigarettes. "You mind?"

"Yeah."

Like that ever stopped her. She lit up, the trail of smoke oozing from the black, charred end of the cig and tangling in Nico's nostrils, choking him. He hated nicotine, hated that she'd taken up the habit in the first place. He couldn't count the number of evenings that he had been forced to share a room with a brooding, middle-school-aged, rebellious Thalia, sitting next to the cracked window, her blackened lips whispering, "don't tell" as he endlessly counted cards-Zeus and Poseidon and Hades and Hercules-and pretended he lived with Percy instead.

He pulled the keys out of the top drawer of the cash register and came out from behind the counter. "I'm locking up."

Thalia took the hint, backtracking out the door and standing on the porch to exhale her poison towards the sea, maybe hoping-like Nico did-that she could hurt it, hurt it until it gave Percy back.

"Heard you were staying up at the cape," she said casually.

Nico, locking the door, eyed her suspiciously, suddenly remembering the others who'd casually "dropped by", trying to persuade him to leave the cape.

"Must be cold," she commented, and left it at that.


	9. Memory

When Annabeth woke up and Percy wasn't next to her, she didn't panic.

The only one panicking was Nico, waking up on the beach alone. While Annabeth was lazily getting up, going through her morning routine and assuming her boyfriend was just "elsewhere", Nico was scrabbling through the sand, feeling the grains dig into his nails, finding Percy's clothes but not the boy himself.

He was standing up, still clutching Percy's orange t-shirt in his hands, looking around. Looking to the sea.

He was running down to the shore, leaving footprints in the wet sand, splashing into the ocean, screaming at the top of his lungs, wincing as the cold salt water slapped through his jean-clad legs.

He was realizing that Percy was gone.


	10. What Girl?

Jason set down his hand of cards, studying Nico across the kitchen table. Nico pretended not to notice in the hopes that he could avoid whatever question the other guy was about to ask.

"Nico, who is that girl?" Jason asked.

"What girl?" Nico fenced, and Jason gave him a knowing look. He'd gotten good at it, especially since mastering the eyebrow twitch. "The girl who's always leaving the shack just as I come in. Is she your girlfriend?"

Nico almost snorted. "She's my cousin."

"Oh." Jason picked up his cards again, then set them down. "How do you know her?"

"She's my cousin," Nico repeated. Jason nodded absently. "I see. That's nice," he said. He put a card in the center of the table.

"That isn't the right suit," Nico said. "And it's my turn."

Jason picked up all of the cards and stacked them into a deck. "Actually, I'm done playing for now, Nic, okay?" He stood up, chair scraping against the tile floor, wallet chain jangling entirely too loudly for comfort. Everything about Jason was noisy; even when he was standing still, not saying anything-his clothes were loud, his attitude was loud, his whole appearance was like getting struck by lightning. Lots of times, Nico wished it was Jason he had grown up with instead of Percy. He thought, maybe, that Jason's love would have been sturdier, less sea-tossed and wind-blown than Percy's absent-minded affection.

He always felt guilty afterwards, but it never stopped him from wishing.

"Where are you going?" he asked, getting up to follow.

"Out," Jason said, and then added, "I need to be alone."

Nico fell back, steps slowing, then halting. Left behind.


	11. Cousins

"He's my brother," Thalia confessed. They were sitting in the room that Nico was using as a bedroom in the cape; since he usually slept outside in the summer, it was actually Annabeth's. They were both bundled up in sweaters and jackets, hunched under a sheet tent created by the bed and a couple of nails on the left wall. The electric lantern in the middle of the floor, the only space not occupied by a mass of blankets and pillows, cast golden patches on the sheet, creating a space that felt like the center of the universe. Nico could almost pretend that he was eleven again, Percy was downstairs getting snacks, and Thalia was about to tell him about her latest crush.

Almost.

"Jason?"

Thalia nodded and popped another Mallowmar onto her tongue. "We went to different homes, obviously."

"That makes him my cousin," Nico said, dumbfounded.

"Small world," she grunted, through a full mouth.

" I don't remember him."

"You were too young, dumbass," Thalia said. "You never met him."

"Does he know?" Nico asked. She shrugged. Thalia wasn't good with details. Or people. Or anything, really, except scaring people. She was kind of like Nico in that respect. "Don't you think you should tell him?"

"Would _you_ want to be part of this family?" Thalia pointed out.


	12. Will

In the second week of January, they all loaded into the Taurus-Jason and Nico and Hazel and Frank-and headed to Bath for one of Frank's appointments, one that would tell if he had to go back again. Nico went because Hazel asked him, not because he hoped to see the blond intern again. Honestly. He'd barely even thought about the guy; after all, he was waiting on Percy.

No one was allowed in with Frank, and so he and Hazel and Jason sat in the waiting room, occupying one whole row of chairs, like they were members of Team Frank. Jason picked up a celebrity gossip magazine and spent ten minutes pretending to read it while Nico and Hazel played the Waiting Room Game, which mostly consisted of Hazel pointing out tacky decor and Nico subtracting 50 points for everything.

At eleven seventeen, Nico saw him again. This time in casual clothes, jeans and a button-down shirt, he strode up to the desk and started a chat with the receptionist. Nico watched him. He was so animated, a wide smile filling his face as he traded gossip with the woman behind the desk, hands flying through the air excitedly. Nico wondered what it would be like to be that happy with the world.

Nurses who passed by greeted the intern like an old friend, and he knew every one of their names.

He half-turned, leaning on the counter to sign something with his left hand, and as he straightened, tucking a pay check into his back pocket, he caught sight of Nico. Nico could hardly believe the way the boy's face lit up with recognition as he bounded over. Nobody looked at him like that, not when they didn't know him.

"Hey," the boy said, slightly breathless.

"Hi," Nico mumbled, too aware of Jason, eavesdropping under the guise of getting another magazine, and Hazel, not bothering with any guise as she stared openly up at the boy, her eyebrows raised. She nudged Nico, and he didn't need to be a mind reader to tell what she was thinking-_he's __hot_.

"So, you're here again," the boy said, and then scratched his neck. "Um, obviously."

Nico snorted. Hazel looked shocked, but Jason snickered, too, picking out a gossip rag and flipping to a page with two supermodels and a car doing their best to sell Snickers bars.

"Sorry, I don't have cookies, this time," the boy went on, and smiled. "Are you here for your friend, again?"

Nico nodded. He felt under a microscope, words seizing up in his throat. Why'd they have to meet this way, at this time? He couldn't relax. The other guy sensed the awkwardness, face coloring. "I'll just, um, head out, then," he said, backing off.

Hazel stood up. "Actually, I could really use a drink. I don't suppose you know where I could find a water fountain?"

The intern brightened again, confirming Nico's suspicions that he was a hopeless do-gooder. "Sure do. C'mon, I'll show you."

As soon as the pair had disappeared down the hall, Jason turned a page in his magazine and hummed speculatively. "Who was _that_?"

Nico glanced at his toes, trying to use his jacket collar to hide the sudden blush that rose to his cheek. "No one."

"You seem to like 'no one' a lot," his estranged cousin oh-so-helpfully observed. Nico scowled.

"It doesn't matter."

Jason turned another page and rustled the magazine, settling it in his lap. "Hey, he seemed to be pretty into you. I'd go for it."

"I said, it doesn't matter," Nico snarled. He knew he shouldn't get so impatient-Jason didn't know a thing about Percy-but he couldn't help feeling defensive. Checking someone else out wasn't a crime, was it? It didn't change how guilty he felt.

"You can't run away from happiness forever," Jason observed. "We're gonna dig you out of that shell somehow, dude."

Nico chose not to respond to that. Hazel came back, water splattered over the front of her t-shirt and a smile on her face. It wasn't as forced as it used to be, but it still was just ungenuine enough to turn Nico's stomach. Frank accompanied her, looking shaky but not dead yet. Nico stood up, all-too-ready to leave.

"His name is Will," Hazel whispered in his ear as they got back in the car, and slipped Will's number into Nico's palm.


	13. Back and Forth

Nico almost didn't call.

He didn't have a working phone, for one thing, but-as Jason helpfully pointed out-there was one in the shack. Or in the gable, if he wanted to open himself up to shameless gossip and plenty of snide comments, not to mention blatant eavesdropping and possible bet-making on the chances of him getting laid.

But after the third time Hazel asked, "Did you call _yet_?", he gave up.

He'd taken the scrap of paper out of his pocket and put it back so many times, it was soft and ragged around the edges, the pen marks faded from black to a sickly purple-blue. He'd nearly memorized the number.

Will answered on the second ring. "Hello?"

Nico's stomach turned over. He hadn't felt this nervous since-well, he didn't think he'd ever felt this nervous. It wasn't that he was worried about what Will would think, or that he was stressed he was going to make a fool of himself. It was more the kind of feeling he got when he was doing something that he knew, beyond any doubt, was wrong.

This was wrong.

He hung up.

Then, neurotically, he seized the phone again, hitting _redial_. It was just one call, his rebellious brain told his heart. There was no need to get his panties in a knot about it. Plus, Jason was right-Nico had to rejoin the real world at some point.

"Did you just hang up on me?" Will asked, amused.

"Shut up," Nico grumbled. "I was . . . freaked out." A gross understatement.

Will's laugh, in his ear, was too close for comfort, making their conversation personal. Turning him from a stranger into a friend. "You were nervous. That's so cute."

"I wasn't nervous!"

"Hazel said that you wouldn't call."

Nico scowled. "Hazel has a big mouth."

Will laughed again. "So, when do you want to meet?"

_Meet?_ Exactly what had Hazel said to Will? "I'm not sure that's a good . . ." Nico said slowly. "I mean, we just met, and this is kind of . . . I don't think so."

"It's bound to happen eventually," Will pointed out. "I mean, okay, say that we wait and chat on the phone a few times and whatever, and then when we do finally get together, we hate each other. Now, suppose that we meet now and find out right away that we hate each other. That's much less time-consuming." Nico couldn't figure out if the other boy was serious or not.

"You could be a serial rapist," he stalled.

"I'm sixteen and I volunteer at a hospital," Will replied. "Whereas you look like the drummer of a heavy metal band. I think I'm the only who should be worried, not you."

"I do not look like that," Nico protested.

"Oh, really?" was the skeptical reply. "What are you wearing right now?"

There was a pause.

"Oh, God-forget I said that," Will groaned. Nico smirked despite himself.


	14. A Date? Sort of

They walked along the row of tourist shops, and neither of them bought anything. Will was on a budget and Nico lived there; the tacky t-shirts and flimsy souvenirs had no appeal to either of them. It was cold. Will's hair was down, the winter wind turning it into a wave of blond tangles, and Nico thought he might want to touch it, one day, but not right then.

They chatted about stupid stuff, and Nico didn't hate him-he kind of liked him, really. They had ice cream even though it was freezing, and Will had strawberry and Nico had chocolate and the flavors didn't really matter, but he fixed them in his mind anyway because it was his first date and he wanted to remember, later on, so that he could take the memories out of his head like most people took pictures out of their scrapbooks, to look at and sigh over and think, "oh, if only I'd kept that boy . . .", which was how he was seeing Will. The boy he couldn't keep.

"Are you going to tell me his name?" Will asked in the end, while they stood waiting for Jason to come pick Nico up and take him back to the gable, for hot chocolate and some mild cross-examination.

"Who?" Nico asked, hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched against the chill.

Will scuffed a sneaker against the cobblestone sidewalk, rubbing his gloved hands together for warmth. "The guy that you aren't over yet."

Nico wanted to melt away, dribble into the gutter like thawed ice in spring. "It isn't like that."

"What's it like?" Will asked, but he didn't really have an stood there, looking at the abandoned city benches, faded souvenir shops, boarded-up fast food joints. Nico dug in his pocket and pulled out his balled-up cone wrapped, chucking it in a nearby public trash can.

"Percy," he said eventually. "His name is Percy."

There was a moment of silence, and then Will snorted. "That's a stupid name."

He should have been offended, but Nico found himself cracking a smile. "He was a stupid boy." He caught himself too late-the "was" nagged at his conscience, right underneath "going on a date with someone else".

"Obviously," Will said. "Otherwise he'd be the one here with you."


	15. Sweethearts

January turned into February, the season of love, and Will turned up on Nico's doorstep with a box of chocolate.

"That better not be for me," Nico warned, seeing it.

"Don't be vain," Will scoffed. "I just wanted an excuse to eat chocolate-so you'd better share."

They sat on the front step, even if it was below freezing. Nico wasn't sure what would happen if he invited Will inside; he wasn't sure he wanted to find out.

"Trade my strawberry creams for your dark chocolate fudge," Will said, seemingly oblivious to the cold. They had divided the box between them, thirteen candies each.

Nico didn't have anything against strawberry creams, but- "I _like_ the dark chocolate fudge."

"C'mon, don't be stingy," Will whined. "Hand 'em over."

"How about half of the fudge and half of the coconut clusters?" Nico negotiated.

"There are coconut? Gross," the blond boy said, disgusted. "Take those, too." He uncerimoniously plunked the offending chocolates in the other boy's lap, and seized Nico's half of the box to dig out the dark chocolate fudge. "I'm taking the vanilla cremes, too," he informed him.

Nico gave up. "Fine. Whatever. Have the rest of the box."

"What? _No,_" Will said emphatically. "I want to share." He chuckled, as if knowing that he was being overbearing.

Nico let Will do what he wanted, too caught up in the ebb and tide of the boy to protest.

"Tell me about him," Will said, popping a vanilla creme in his mouth. "Percy, I mean."

Nico blanched. "Why?"

"Because I want to know!"

Nico shook his head; not because he didn't want to, even though he didn't, but because he didn't know where to start. He couldn't pinpoint the beginning, unravel the tangles enough to identify the first strand-he couldn't trace events back far enough to find the right moment to introduce Percy to Will. He wasn't that good with words.

"He's . . . eighteen," he said slowly. "Um, three years older than me. I used to crash at his house, sometimes. We're second cousins, but he always treated-treats-me like a brother. His mom is really nice. She bakes a lot, kind of like Hazel, and when I was little I always wished that she was my mom, too."

Will listened, keeping his eyes on the frozen ground as if knowing that Nico was uncomfortable enough without being watched.

"Every summer, we'd come up here-Aunt Sally and Percy and me and Thalia and my sister, Bianca. Later, our friends started to come up, too." Percy and Thalia and Bianca's friends; Nico was never anything but the tag-along little brother. He'd hadn't been good at making friends of his own. "It was . . . it _is_ a tradition."

Will didn't prompt him, but he felt the urging to go on, anyway, to let the past spring to life in front of him for a few hazy seconds; just the good parts. He only had to recount the good parts.

"We have bonfires and watch creepy movies and go down to the town to play the terrible video games in the tourist shops. I sleep outside. I like it-there's so much sky. It's not like being in the city at all." He stopped his memories. That was enough.

"I like summers," Nico concluded, and ate a coconut cluster.


	16. Questions

_a/n-hey, guys! First off, if you're reading this, THANK YOU! Thank you for reading this far! You're awesome! I know that all of the chapters are short. It's intentional; I wanted the story to come across as kind of choppy, like we're just dropping in on Nico's life at random intervals. I hope it's working! ;)  
Regarding Percy and what happened to him, well, that's coming soon and that's all I'm going to say. Thanks again for reading this loooong note and extra big hugs to everyone who has reviewed/will review! _

"Was he your boyfriend?" Will asked, skipping another stone across the surface of the calm ocean.

Nico considered tossing one of his own rocks at Will's head-the intern had been slipping questions about Percy into the conversation every time he came over, which was frequently. Will hadn't pressed him into any more uncomfortable dates, but his presence was like an avalanche-Nico had only kicked one drift, and the next thing he knew there was a pile of snow thundering down onto his head.

"He wasn't," he said shortly.

Will picked up his last projectile. "Why not?"

"He had a girlfriend. He wasn't gay. He saw me as a little brother," Nico snapped. "Take your pick."

"But something happened," Will pressed. "Something _must_ have happened." Will never stopped poking around, never stopped trying to pry up all of the dank floorboards in the corners of Nico's head. Furthermore, he did it with the subtlety and grace of Fred Flintstone's dinosaur-hunting club.

"Nothing happened. That's what happened." Nico threw a stone; it landed in the water with a sad _plonk_. "Just drop it."

"Soooo . . . he doesn't know how you feel?" Will took Nico's arm, adjusting the angle it was forming. "Try it like that."

Nico tossed, and to his annoyance, the rock skipped across the water like gravity was just a suggestion-_plip, plip, plonk._ "He knows."

Will whistled. "Rough, man. Rejected?"

"No," he said briefly. "Actually, I wasn't." And he left it at that.


	17. Frank

Will played guitar. It was the most annoyingly cliched thing.

"Don't you dare," Nico warned, when he first saw the instrument in Will's hand, "sing to me. Not now, not ever."

Will laughed, and sang his love songs to Hazel's budding cacti by the stove, the only place in the gable warm enough for them. Nothing that Nico said ever seemed to bother Will, not in the way it would bother most people.

Jason wandered in, trailed by Hazel, and they sat down at the table to listen. Will was obviously pleased to have a more appreciative audience, and before long the three of them were jabbering like jays about old music and Nico, forgotten, was slinking out of the kitchen to go down to the ocean when he ran into Frank.

Frank was probably the only person at the coast who looked worse than Nico himself, and that was saying something. There were bags under his eyes, big, suitcase-sized ones, and he yawned periodically, often setting off a chain-reaction of yawning that had all of them wishing for bed. He was losing his muscle without gaining any baby fat back, leaving his skin sagging on too-big bones. According to Hazel, this had nothing to do with the radiotherapy, which wasn't going as well as hoped. Frank was just giving up.

Nico had been there. Sometimes he thought he was still there. So even though he wanted nothing more than to run as far away from Will's melodramatic crooning, he stuck his hands in his pockets and said, "Let's play a game of cards, Frank."

Later, Will walked him home, leaving his battered Ford in the gable's front drive. He slipped his hand into Nico's, and Nico let him, just for the night. After spending an hour looking into Frank's lined face, he welcomed the curdles of shameful happiness, scraps to hang on to when it was him at death's door.

"You didn't like my singing," Will observed. "You barely heard one song before you bolted out the door."

"You don't like my attitude," Nico pointed out. "It's hardly stopped you from liking me."

"Sooo," Will drew out the word impishly, "you _like_ me?"

Nico scowled, glad of the darkness that hid his reddening cheeks. "Shut up. I never said that."

Will laughed. "But it was implied, right? That's a start."

Nico just shook his head.

Will was silent for a moment, the pause in the conversation a velvet-wrapped thing that formed a cushion between them, winding around Nico's heart in lethargic warmth. "I'm serious, you know," he finally said, softly. "I really like you."

Well, Percy had _liked_ him too, and that hadn't gotten him anywhere-Nico bit back the sharp retort. He summoned one of his oblique replies, something noncommittal and slightly untrue, or maybe just lighthearted enough to change the topic without hurting Will's feelings. But the half-lies refused to leave his tongue, and he ended up just squeezing Will's hand a little tighter and hoping it was enough.

When they reached the house, Will drew away, releasing Nico's hand as if afraid the boy would snap at him if he didn't, and fumbled with the zipper of his coat, pulling it up the few millimeters it had slipped during the walk. He shuffled backwards a few steps. "Um, here we are."

"Here we are," Nico agreed, folding his arms.

"Well . . . goodnight," the other boy mumbled.

Nico was halfway up the porch when he turned around, saw that Will hadn't budged. It was too dark to see the other boy's expression, but he could guess. Nico swallowed. "Will."

"Yeah?" The voice coming from the shadowed figure was too eager; it cracked, and Will's dark arm came up to scratch, embarrassed, at his equally unclear neck.

"Come have dinner with me."

Nico didn't have to say it twice.


	18. (that cliched trope)

"It's almost March already," Will said, gnawing on the end of his pencil. He was doing a crossword puzzle, a hobby that Nico found only slightly less pretentious than his penchant for playing the guitar. He'd developed a habit of coming over in the morning and not leaving until lunch, if later; he blamed it on his internship being over, and having too much time on his hands.

Nico poured oatmeal into a bowl, adding water from the bucket he kept in the sink. After a few days of Will's nagging, he'd finally gotten something done about the electricity-and it _was_ nice to have a phone again-but the water and heat were slower to be fixed, and too expensive for Nico's pittance of an income from the surf shack.

Will scratched the last word into his puzzle and flipped the paper to the Wanted section. He beckoned to Nico, who punched a button on the microwave-grateful that he no longer had to heat up his meals on a gas stove-and joined him at the table.

"Help me look for an apartment," Will commanded, running his finger down the square black-and-white checkerboard of ads.

"Why?"

"I need to give up my housing spot to the next intern coming in," he explained. The microwave timer went off and Nico got up, wincing at the cold linoleum, to retrieve his breakfast. "If I can't find somewhere else to stay, I'm going to have to move back home," Will went on.

"Then go home," Nico said, padding back to the table. The contrast between the cold floor at his feet and the scalding hot oatmeal bowl in his hands was making him shiver.

"I live in California," Will replied.

Nico arched an eyebrow, a thousand questions running through his mind, not the least of which was what a boy from the Sunshine State was doing as an intern on the complete opposite side of the country, but all he said was, "So? It's not like anything's keeping you here."

Will tilted his head, blue eyes resting on Nico's face. A smile, smaller and softer than his usual shit-eating grin, touched his features. "That's . . . not entirely true," he said quietly.

Nico flushed and concentrated on his oatmeal. "Stop that."

"Stop what?" Will asked innocently.

Nico just growled. It wasn't worth bringing up. "You know what? There are, like, six rooms in this place. Pick one and stash your stuff in it."

There was a pause. Nico looked up to see how Will was taking the offer, and his eyes widened in surprise. The blond boy was frozen, mouth slightly open; just for a second, but Nico caught it. "You-I, mean, I can-you're telling me to-" Will stammered out, obviously shocked.

Nico huffed, self-consciousness making him impatient. "I'm _saying_, Will Solace, that you can stay here. And it doesn't mean anything, so don't get all happy. I hate happy. And, like, find a job or something because I'm not feeding you for free-and if you don't wipe that ridiculous look off your face right now, I'm not feeding you _at all_-"

Will sprung out of his chair, enveloping Nico in a tight, uncomfortable hug. Nico's cheek dug into Will's collarbone; he felt the boy's heart thudding fast against his chin. One of his shoulders pressed into Will's side, and his neck was twisted at a nearly impossible angle. "Thankyouthankyouthankyou-" Will babbled.

Nico extricated himself. "Job," he reminded the other boy. "And hugs aren't allowed."

Will sat back down, calm now, and snickered. "Hugs aren't allowed? Is that an actual rule?"

Nico stole a newspaper page and reached for a Sharpie, finding the least-word-cluttered part of the newsprint. In capital letters, he printed HOUSE RULES, and below that, "no hugs allowed". He got up and taped the paper to the fridge. "Yes. It's a rule. See? It's on paper, so it must be."

Will reached over his shoulder, stole the Sharpie, and added, in messy scrawl under Nico's neat printing, "no hating on Will's music."

"I don't hate on your music," Nico objected. "It just sucks."

Will tapped the rule with the marker. "Hey! You just broke the rule."

"That isn't a rule-guests can't make up rules." Nico made a grab for the Sharpie.

"You're a guest here, too," Will countered. "So you can't make up rules, either." He held the marker high above Nico's head, which was annoying.

"Fine. We both make rules-but we both have to agree on them," Nico said, folding his arms.

"I don't agree to the 'no hugging' rule," Will said immediately.

"Too bad. It stays," Nico shot back.

"Not fair."

"I," he said smugly, "have seniority. So I get final call on all rules."

"Well, I," Will matched his tone, "have the Sharpie. So I think that _I_ get final call on all rules."

Nico reached for it. Will jerked it out of reach again. "Give it _back_, Solace!"

"No way!" Will dodged another campaign to steal the marker, slipped, and just barely caught himself on the counter. Nico took advantage of the distraction and lunged again. Will bowled past him bodily, knocking him into the fridge, and shot out of the room.

Nico chased after him, snarling some cliched threat that he had probably picked up from years of being chased by Percy or Thalia. Will was fast, but Nico knew the house better. He ambushed the other boy in a tackle, ignoring the flutter in his stomach as their bodies collided in favor of his pursuit of the marker, and they both hit the floor. The Sharpie rolled, forgotten, under a couch, as Will grabbed a fistful of Nico's hair in an attempt to wrestle him into a choke hold. Nico jabbed his elbow into the other boy's side, twisting his t-shirt so tightly that it wound around Will's neck.

"You-will not-win-" Will spat out, doing his best to beat Nico into submission. Nico went for the nonverbal reply, thrusting both of his thumbs into Will's ribcage. Will smacked his head onto the floor, just hard enough to be jarring, and in return he lunged up and bit Will's ear.

Will howled his defeat and let go, laughing.

Nico realized he was happy.


	19. At Mickey D's

Hazel tossed her sandwich wrapper in the trash and sat back down in the chair across from Nico's. Nico was on his third Happy Meal. Hazel had nibbled at her burger, and now she was picking at her cold fries.

Nico reached for them. "I'll eat those."

"Thief!" she seized them off of the tray and clutched them to her chest, getting grease spots on her white blouse. She neither noticed nor cared.

"I'm _hungry_," Nico complained, half-standing up to stretch farther across the table in pursuit.

"You had three Happy Meals!" Hazel leaned backwards, chair tilting dangerously.

"I'm growing. Hand 'em over," he commanded. She giggled, and didn't.

He gave up, and went back to his chicken nuggets. Hazel ate another fry.

"I'm worried," she began, after a pause.

"About Frank?"

"About my brother."

"Oh." Nico knew exactly nothing about Hazel's brother, except that he was the reason that Hazel, and Frank and Jason by extension, had come to the coast.

"I thought if we hung out here for a while, I'd run into him, or run into someone who knew him," she confessed. "But Jason's found his sister and you've found your cousin-" one of them, anyway, "-and I haven't found _anybody_. Well, except you," she smiled her empty smile at him. He gave her an equally meaningless one back.

"Have you ever met him?" he asked. "Your brother, I mean?"

Hazel shrugged, a habit she'd probably picked up from him.

"Do you know his name?" Nico pressed.

She shrugged again. It really was annoying, wasn't it? he thought. No wonder people seemed to get so easily pissed at him.

"How do you expect to find him? How do you even know he's here?" he demanded.

She fidgeted. "I just will."

"Hazel," he said seriously. "Are you lying?"

She threw a fry at him, and didn't reply. He was so glad they could have their little dinner dates.


	20. We're Having WHAT for Supper?

"It isn't glamorous," Will said, gesturing around at the hardware store. "But, y'know, it's a job. And Herr Hitler told me I had to get a job."

Nico stuffed his hands in the pockets of his jeans. The weather was warming-slowly, but steadily; rain fell more than snow, and he could venture out without thermals and a sweater under his parka. He ignored Will's jibe at his supposedly totalitarian regime. "Do you get a discount on lumber and Gorilla Glue?"

Will made a face. "Poke fun all you want, Mr. Doom n'Gloom," he said. "I'm making more money than you."

"Does that make you feel better?" Nico asked. "Have you recovered your manhood now?"

"Dude, you shouldn't even _know_ the word 'manhood'," Will retorted. "I saw you putting on _eyeliner_ this morning."

Nico scowled. "Was not."

"Was so-you're wearing it now!"

"I," Nico said, with as much dignity as he could muster, "havenaturally dark eyelashes."

Will sputtered out a laugh. "You're _such_ a girl! Just admit it."

" . . . you aren't getting supper tonight." He wondered if it was normal to like someone so much that he wanted to kill them. Probably. "And I'm making _puttanesca._"

"Did you know that _puttanesca_ is 'whore' in Italian?" Will leaned on the counter between them, raising his eyebrows. "You just told me that you're making a whore for supper."

"That should be interesting," Nico muttered. "And yes, I did know that."

"So . . . you're not letting me have the whore tonight?" Will asked, just as his manager came up front to check the cash drawers.

Nico snickered at the look that his housemate received.

_a/n-I know, I know, I know! The chapters are so short and it makes this story look longer than it is and it bugs me but that's how it is and I'm so soooorrrryyyy(bows down repeatedly). Please be understanding._


	21. April Showers

He could sit on the beach now without going numb. Waves lapped at his bare toes, and he fiddled with the laces of his boots, stashed between his upraised legs.

"I'm starting to like someone," he told the sea, because he couldn't tell Percy. "He's not really like you at all. He's sarcastic and flirty and kind of geeky and he remembers everything about people, even people he hasn't seen for months or years. Everyone likes him." He sighed, fingers worrying at his shoestrings. "I don't know how he has room for all those people, in his heart."

Nico was more of a loner; he only had time and energy for a few people at once. He didn't believe that everyone could be special, and it was making him insecure, because _he_ certainly wasn't special. Not even to Will.

"You like me, don't you?" he mused. "You don't like everyone, but you like me. Even if it _is_ because we're cousins."

There was no reply, of course. The ocean whoosh-whooshed, and the sky started to look a little less gray and a little more blue, and Nico was still alone, but it didn't feel as bad as before.

Jason plunked down next to him, unexpectedly. "There's a car up at your house. It isn't Will's," he informed the younger boy.

"Leo and Piper are here," Nico said absently. "It's April, isn't it?" Leo and Piper always came up from Texas in April; they used to rent a beach house with their parents, until they befriended Percy and he insisted they stay at the cape. Nico didn't have any particular feelings about either of them, but hearing they had arrived made him melancholy. It meant that spring had officially arrived.

Jason leaned backwards, resting his arm on one bent leg. "Man, when I first met you, I thought you looked like some ghost kid. Pale, thin; hardly there at all. You lived up in that drafty old house all by yourself. I figured you'd been through some tough shit, so I let you be, and you started to look better, these past few months, with Will. But now you look like shit again, so I'm going to ask, even though you don't want me to. What's up?"

Nico glanced at him, but it wasn't for long. His gaze was drawn back to the sea. It always was. "Summer is coming," he said simply. "And Percy won't be here."

And he was starting to like Will, more than he should, and he was starting to love Hazel and Jason and even Frank and the gable house like he'd loved the cape and Percy. And Thalia had started giving him knowing glances whenever she saw him with Will, which was next to always those days, and Will was-Will was always in his head. And Percy wasn't. Percy wasn't anywhere.

Nico closed his eyes.

Jason, whether he understood what was going on or not, slung his arm around Nico's shoulders companionably. "I'm here for you, like you're my own brother. You know that, right?"

They were the same words that he'd always wanted to hear from Percy, because deep down, wasn't that all that his crush was? A need to be recognized, kept, loved? It was ironic that, when the statement finally came, it was from the wrong cousin.

Nico swallowed.

"It's weird, isn't it?" Jason went on, oblivious. "I mean, what are the chances that I'd come here, on a totally unrelated mission, meet you, befriend you-and it turns out that we're . . . you know, family, the whole time?"

"You think it means something?" Nico mumbled.

"I think everything happens for a purpose," Jason replied. "And mine is to make sure you don't get mired in this shit."

Maybe, Nico thought, he wasn't the wrong cousin after all.

_a/n-this is nonsense. Skip it._

_Lately, I've had this masochistic need to check how many people are viewing each chapter. Obviously, there are a ton of people who click on chapter one and then never go on to the rest of the story, but the sometimes I'll have, say, 63 views on a chapter, and then 73 views on the next one. Where'd those extra 10 people come from? Did they just skip to that chap? Am I the only one who's obsessed with reading chronologically and missing nothing?_

_It's totally been bugging me._


	22. Leo and Piper

Piper was the same as Nico remembered; messy, tan, and somehow gorgeous despite her blatant refusal to entertain the notion of self-adornment. She took one look at him, sighed, and shook her head. "The all-black look? Not your best style." She said nothing about the guitar lying on the couch, the two-sizes-too-big-to-be-Nico's jeans hanging over the back of an armchair, or the tattered newspaper page full of bogus "rules" scrawled on every centimeter hanging on the fridge.

Leo came from the car a few minutes later, hauling a few heavy boxes and kicking the door shut behind him with his heel. Like Piper, he hadn't changed-but unlike Piper, he wasn't bundled up within an inch of his life. He wasn't even wearing a scarf. "Man, how can you stand this weather?" he complained. "It's frickin' freezing-I can't feel my _cojones_." He shivered extra-hard for effect, and nearly dropped his boxes.

He and Piper busied themselves with unpacking the supplies they'd brought, and while Piper organized pasta, ice cream canisters, and s'mores ingredients, Leo wandered around the house looking for things Nico might have broken in the last seven months. He was particularly interested in the issue of the broken heater, which wasn't a surprise. Nico was used to wearing a sweater and socks; the Southern-born mechanic was not.

Hazel and Jason let themselves in. It kind of bothered Nico, how what had used to be his quiet space was turning into the Metro station on a Tuesday morning, but no matter how many times he told his gable friends to buzz off, they kept coming back. He couldn't even lock them out-Will had passed on copies of the key.

"Frank says hi," Hazel said, hugging Nico as if she hadn't just seen him that morning. "He had an appointment, but he wanted to go alone." She lowered her voice, looking drawn. "He'll find out today if he's switching to chemo or not."

Nico rubbed her shoulder awkwardly, like Jason might have. He didn't promise her it would be okay. Jason came up from behind, tackling them both in a bear hug. "It'll be fine!" he said, ever the optimist, and Nico elbowed him in the ribs.

"Let _go_, you giant behemoth," he snarled.

"That's a redundancy, Nics," Jason pointed out, but he allowed himself to be scared off.

"I hear voices," Leo called from the hallway. "Am I crazy, or does Nico have friends here?"

"You're crazy," Piper replied, emerging from the kitchen. "_And_ Nico has friends here." She halted in the doorway, staring at Jason.

He stared back.

Hazel covered her mouth with her hand and clutched at Nico's arm; he, in turn, gave her a confused look. What the hell was everybody acting so dramatic for?

"Um-hi-" Jason stammered out, just before Piper punched him.

"That's for disappearing on me, asshole!" she shouted.

Jason had barely flinched when the blow hit; the guy was built like a linebacker, after all; but her words made him wince and do something Nico had never seen him do before-look embarrassed. "Sorry," he muttered. "There was an emergency-"

"There's always an emergency!" Piper's hands flew out, and Jason stepped back, no doubt afraid she was going to hit him again. "That's why we have _cell phones_, dickhead, so that you can, oh, I don't know-_call people_ when you have emergencies!"

Leo ducked into the room, already looking disheveled, shirt stained with something black and streaked with dust kitties, and cocked his head at the scene. "Oh. Hey, dude. What's up with the vanishing act?"

Jason rubbed his jaw. "Hi, Leo. I had a family emergency."

"And, apparently, _no cell phone_," Piper said icily.

Leo took that in. Then he nodded. "Ah. Okay, then. _Si eso es todo._" He wiped his palms on his jeans and continued his migration to the kitchen.

Piper fumed.

"_Seriously _small world," Jason said under his breath, shooting Nico a despairing look. Nico couldn't resist.

"Everything happens for a purpose," he reminded his cousin.

_a/n-I didn't really like this chapter. So I can't really expect any of you to like it, either. :) Well, anyway, please anticipate a better one tomorrow! Thanks, for the millionth time, to everybody who's read this far!_


	23. A Party

Will's birthday was in April. Hazel insisted on a party.

Nico ended up by the ocean, of course. He excused himself to go to the bathroom and had yet to find a reason to go back. The singing and the lights and the cake were all well and good; but he craved stillness and cold, even after everything.

He removed his boots and socks, and felt wet sand squish under his toes, dampening the hem of his jeans. He slid his jacket off and dropped it to the ground, shivering at the goosebumps that rose on his bare arms.

He breathed in. Out. Looked at the sea that had stolen Percy. He told himself he was doing fine; not pining at all. Not wasting away, or lovesick, not even a little bit. He wasn't that kind of person. He didn't do that sort of thing. He was just here because-because-because this was where he wanted to be, for whatever reason.

But he was fine. Jason had no reason to worry.

Footsteps _swish_ed behind him, and Will came into his peripherals. "Why are you always here?" he asked.

"I told him I was sad that summer was ending, and he told me he was going to college," Nico said, ignoring the question. Will was always asking about Percy. Maybe it was high time Nico started talking. "He was eighteen. I always block that part out, when I remember." He wiggled his toes, feeling the grains of sand grit in between them. "I wanted to keep him here, keep him home. With me. I wished for it, and then I kissed him." Like some kind of spell or charm, to keep Percy by his side forever. Only the sea had seen it, and taken it too literally. _Be careful what you wish for._

Will took his hand. Nico barely noticed.

"I thought he was going to go back inside. I thought, maybe, he'd never talk to me again, or be weirded out, or maybe tell Aunt Sally and get me sent away to school again." Nico shuddered, and focused on the positive. "But he didn't. I don't know why, but he didn't. He-I mean, he had Annabeth and everything. It still doesn't make sense to me." Will squeezed his cold fingers. Listening, more intently than anyone else had. Maybe hearing what Nico was leaving out, between lines and sheets and awful poetry of a pathetic story that probably wasn't even worth being told.

"He-um, he kissed me. Really softly, like-I don't know," Nico blushed, and extricated his fingers from Will's. "Like he was scared. But he was never scared." That was one of the things he loved about Percy. It didn't matter what happened-Percy never got scared.

And then Percy had told him to go to sleep, and he had, right there on the beach next to him. He remembered how much his heart had been pounding, enough that it was all he could hear next to the crash of waves, and how his hands had shook so badly he had to clench them into fists. His whole body had refused to relax, he was that certain he had just ruined everything.

"Go to sleep," Percy had instructed, sounding more amused than revolted. He'd fisted his hand through Nico's hair, a half-caress, half-reprimand; as always, not there enough to be reassuring, but not absent enough to be forgotten.

All of his life, Nico had thought that Percy knew the answer to everything, but of course he'd been wrong. He thought, now, that Percy must have been as scared as he was, and maybe that's why he had done what he'd done. He could see it-Percy, staring out at the sea, long after Nico fell asleep. Thinking about Annabeth, and Nico, and what he was supposed to do. Worrying in the way that he always worried, quietly, in the dark where no one could see.

And then he would have come to some silent decision. Maybe he just wanted to clear his head. Or maybe he couldn't work it out, who he cared about most in the world. Either way, he had eased himself out from under Nico's grasp, shed his clothes-jacket, t-shirt, jeans, sneakers-padded, barefoot, probably shivering, to the edge of the water. And then, Nico could picture all too clearly, he had plunged into the sea, without reservation, without looking back, dashing in and diving into a cresting wave as he'd done countless times, over countless summers.

He hadn't come up.

Will took him by the shoulder, forced him to look away from the ocean. "Nico. Are you-"

"Don't ask if I'm okay," Nico cut him off, shaking his head, dispelling the ghosts still lurking at the corners of his mind. "That's stupid and cliche."

"I'd hate to be stupid or cliche," Will responded. He was about to kiss him, Nico knew it. Will was going to kiss him. He had that kind of expression on, and he kept looking at Nico's lips. There couldn't have been a worse time for it.

He moved away, shrugging Will's hands off of him. The rejection was clear. Will didn't look hurt about it or anything, which just galled Nico more.

They stood in silence for a few moments, and then Will turned around and headed back up the cliff.


	24. Breathing

Nico went for a swim.

The water was black, and cold. He wasn't in it for very long; before he knew it, Will-fully clothed-was dragging him out of the surf, cussing like a sailor and shouting fit to wake the dead. Salt coated Nico's tongue; he coughed uncontrollably.

Figures poured out of the gable, running down the cliff path. They disappeared into the trees and reappeared again, passed the surf shack, thudded across the beach, swarmed around Nico and Will and filled the air with confused shouts and angry proclamations and Jason yanked him out of Will's arms and punched him in the face.

"You aren't the dead one, you fuckfaced moron!" he howled, angrier than Nico had ever seen him. Piper grabbed his arm, shrieking, "How is that going to help anyone?!", and Hazel broke away from Frank's restraining hold to help Nico up. She was too polite to cuss Jason out, but Nico saw that she wanted to. He saw the hardness that was always lurking just behind her fake smile, that ugliness rear up and he almost touched it, then, whatever it was that she was hiding. He almost touched it, but it slipped away, and then he saw the way Leo looked at her at that moment, even though he'd never noticed Leo looking at Hazel before, and he saw the ugly way that Frank looked at both of them, and by then he was sick of seeing but he just couldn't stop.

Will and Jason were arguing, and Piper was clenching and unclenching her hands, and Thalia was telling them all to "shut the fuck up!" and she was looking especially at Jason, who was yelling too much to listen to his sister, and seemed to be yelling mostly _at_ his sister, even as he pointed his words towards Will, and Nico wondered how much he'd really gotten over being separated from Thalia, and Will-

Will was looking at Nico. Not like he wanted to kiss him, not like he was angry, but like finally, after months and hundreds of conversations and endless endless endless questions about Percy, he finally understood what Nico was trying to say.

Nico closed his eyes. He'd had enough.

_a/n-oh my gosh, thank you guys for your reviews! You're the best, seriously._


	25. Closer

"I know you weren't trying to kill yourself," Will said softly, speaking to the darkness. He didn't sound like he _knew_ it. He sounded like he believed it, because he wanted to believe it.

Nico rolled onto his side, turning his back on Will. No one wanted to leave him alone, but no one had wanted to stay with him, either. That might have hurt, if he wasn't past the point in the evening where he gave a damn.

"I know you don't want to die." Another belief.

Nico wanted to say that the guy didn't know shit, but that took too much effort. Will was mostly right-he didn't want to die. But he still wanted to know what it was like; to be swallowed by icy waves, lungs kissed with salt and brain swollen from lack of oxygen. He wanted to see what Percy saw, feel what Percy felt, have the same terror crawling in his veins and bloating his skin. It was the only way he could know Percy, anymore.

"I lost my mom when I was nine," Will whispered.

Nico didn't want to hear it.

Maybe Will sensed that. Or maybe he was tired, too-tired of caring about Nico when Nico couldn't give as much care back. He didn't go on, whichever it was.

"He isn't dead," Nico said, finally.

"Okay," Will sighed. He rolled over, too. They fell asleep with their backs to each other.


	26. What Happened Next

The call came on April 17th, two days after Will's birthday. It was from a hysterical Sally Jackson.

Percy had been found.

_a/n-what is this chapter? Seriously, what kind of idiot would call this a chapter?_

_ Oh my God, you guys, I'm so sorry and yet not really sorry because I just could. Not. Resist. I love cliffhangers! Thanks again for all of the favorites, reviews, etc. It might not seem like a lot, but every one is so thrilling to me!_


	27. Leaving

Nico left the cape. He told Will he could stay, if he wanted, but the boy just shook his head."I overstayed my welcome," Will said, stuffing underwear into his duffle. His hair was clipped back, long tendrils of it curling at the base of his neck. Nico focused on that, rather than the fact that he was getting used to having Will's back turned on him.

Will straightened up, slinging his duffel over his shoulder. "Well, that's everything," he said, in a final-sounding voice.

Nico wondered if he could manage a smile. "You could, um, visit," he offered awkwardly. "I wouldn't mind."

Will looked away. "It's kind of far."

Nico nodded. "Yeah. I get it." There was a long pause, and then he blurted out, "I'm sorry."

"Sorry?" Will's eyebrows went up. "Sorry for what?"

Nico waved a hand vaguely around. "Dragging you into my emotional shit. Calling when I had no intention of starting a relationship. Nearly drowning. Being me."

Will stared at him. "Are you serious?"

"Look, I know you're angry at me-"

"I'm not." Will sighed, rubbing the back of his neck compulsively. "God, Nico, I just-" His fingers slipped under the collar of his t-shirt, drawing out a rawhide cord. He rolled it absently between his thumb and forefinger. "I've been freaked out, okay?"

"Because of how fucked up I am," Nico said dully.

"Stop that," Will snapped angrily. "Stop acting like you're so . . . tragic, or something, I don't know, but it pisses me off. You aren't half as screwed up as you pretend to be." He paused, took a deep breath, and went on in a gentler tone, "I'm just worried, okay?"

"I don't need you to worry about me."

Will grimaced. "I wish I was that noble. I'm not worried about _you_. I'm worried about . . . _us_. I mean, there isn't really an 'us' to begin with, but I've just been so . . ." He stressed his cord again, so tightly that Nico thought it might break. "Don't forget me," he said, changing tact without warning. "I know that you have boss-awesome Percy back and everything, but I-you know. Whatever it is that they're singing in the latest country song."

"Ain't nothin' wrong with gettin' my sun daze on?" Nico suggested wryly. "Or, how about, 'save a horse, ride a cowboy'? Classic. Always been a personal favorite of mine."

"Okay, wise guy-"

"God made girls? Or maybe there's 'something in the water'?"

"Nico, dammit, will you stop making me want to strangle you?" Will demanded.

Nico gave a rare smile. "Won't it be easier then, for you to leave?"

Will swore, hand swinging down from his necklace to jam into his jean pocket, while the rest of his body jittered restlessly, foot tapping, shoulders swinging to one side, then the other as he fidgeted. "Look, you-" he began, and then scowled. He pulled his hand out of his pocket, and brought it up to his neck again. This time, he drew the cord out from beneath his t-shirt, pulling it up and over his head.

He balled it in his fist, holding it out to Nico. "Here. Just in case. It was my first pick."

Nico cautiously held his hand out, and Will plunked the necklace unceremoniously into his palm, where it rapidly uncoiled like an out-of-control garden hose. The rawhide cord draped on either side of his hand, and in the center of his palm lay a yellow guitar pick. He clenched his fingers around it, rubbing his thumb over the worn plastic. "I shouldn't-" he started.

"Don't you dare refuse it," Will cut him off, looking embarrassed. "You need it more than I do. Besides-" he grabbed the pick back from Nico and turned it around, showing him the numbers written on the back in black Sharpie. "This is my cell. Call whenever, I don't care." He looped the leather around Nico's neck, intruding into his space bubble. "Just, um, call, okay?"

Nico touched the pick gently. It fell right below his collarbone, and he could feel the thud of his heart underneath it. "New house rule-no sappy presents," he said, afraid his face might be betraying how uncomfortable and baffled he was.

Will made a face. "You know I don't follow your rules."

Nico snorted and looked up, intending to say something brusque and dismissive. The retort, whatever it was, was DOA. "You helped me," he said softly instead, feeling small. All at once he was terrified of going back to New York, terrified that getting what he wished for was once again going to screw him over. He'd much rather stay here, with Will and Jason and Hazel(and those other kids who weren't quite as important to him), where everything was known, and safe. "You might not think so, but you've helped me a lot."

He reached out, sliding his fingers around the silky skin of Will's wrist, needing something solid to hold onto, understanding the insecurity the other boy was feeling in a sudden rush. Will looked down, surprised, and Nico, maybe having lost his mind, or maybe just finding it again, screwed up all of his courage and stretched up to kiss him.

It tasted of oranges and toast with butter, and metaphorically of everything Nico could have been having while he was moping over a not-dead-boy. It didn't feel like a goodbye at all, especially not when Will yanked his arm out of Nico's light grip and slid it around his back, his other hand going to the base of his neck.

"You-" Nico pulled back long enough to get the one-word accusation out; Will wasn't having it. He twisted his fingers into Nico's belt loops, a chastisement for holding out for so long, and anchored him to the spot, keeping him where it was claustrophobically warm, under soft lips and chapped skin. Give him an inch, Nico thought dourly, surrendering, and he'll take the whole continent.

Finally, and entirely too soon, Will stepped away, face flushed. He shoved his hands in his pockets and backed off, hunching his shoulders as if shy. Nico very much doubted, after the past breathless minute-and-forty-nine-seconds, that he was shy. "I . . . guess I could visit," he said quietly.

Nico swallowed, eyeing the knobbly rug. "Yeah." What was wrong with him? He should know better-he _did_ know better-but if he didn't leave soon, he was sure he was going to kiss Will again. "Bye, Will."

It was Will's turn to swallow, but he managed a sunny smile anyway. "Bye, Nico."


	28. Percy

Nico stood outside the door to Percy's hospital room. He felt a sudden, inexplicable longing for Will; for the comfort of familiarity, for a friend, or whatever it was that the boy was. He had been waiting and dreaming and wishing and _staying_ for this moment, and when he was finally given what he wanted, he stood frozen, hardly able to breathe.

There were so many what-ifs. So many problems. So many chances. He wasn't sure he could even face his cousin, after what had happened; after kisses and oceans and so many long months. What if he went in, and saw a stranger? What if Percy was different? What if he was the same?

Annabeth emerged from the room. It was the first time he'd seen her since the day Percy disappeared, and her blond hair was longer and her eyes were grayer and Nico really, really, really wanted to hate her but Percy loved her, so how could he?

She didn't hug him-they didn't do that sort of thing-but she gave him a weary sort of nod and said, "He's asking for you. Just go in, already." She passed him, heading for where Thalia was grudgingly waiting her turn in a lobby that smelled like bleach and orange air freshener. The two girls met in a hug, and he looked away quickly, not wanting to disturb their moment.

Nico went in.

He saw Percy first, without taking in the rest of the room-not the jungle of get-well flowers or the army of blue teddy bears, not the two cracked chairs or the depressing view out the window-he saw Percy, in a johnny, sitting up with the aid of two enormous pillows. Percy, whose hair was perpetually messy and whose hands restlessly tapped at the sheets under his fingers, making the IV drip lodged between two of his knuckles twitch unpredictably.

Nico's stomach lurched. He thought he might be sick. It was entirely unreal, to see Percy right there, to see him in life, not dreams, to _see_ him. He was familiar-of course he was familiar, Nico had grown up with that face, with those hands-and strange-had his face always been that round, that young? Had his hands always been so large?-and scary, in a roundabout sort of way.

Nico's hands formed fists, squeezing his fingers so tightly that he thought the skin on his knuckles might split. He was so very embarrassed. How was he supposed to do this, to talk and act normal when all he was thinking was that he had _kissed Percy_, and then Percy had _drowned_? It was like one huge, big-ass cosmic sign that no, you don't get to have him. It's not meant to be. Sorry, try again.

But he was back, regardless of all of that, and Nico was relieved of it.

Percy smiled, like everything was normal. Like he'd just shown up to kidnap Nico for an afternoon of video games and Corn Puff wars. "Hey, little dude," he said, and there was nothing in his face that rejected Nico, nothing that spoke of shadows or night secrets or any of the things Nico would rather leave in the past.

Nico tackled his cousin in a hug.


	29. Catching Up

"So, tell me everything," Percy commanded. "Annabeth won't. She says she doesn't want to 'upset me'." He made a face, clearly not impressed with that. "But I'm fine, so spill."

"It hasn't been that long," Nico snorted. He was sitting on the end of the bed, legs folded, eating the tapioca pudding he'd swiped from the bedside table. He couldn't remember if the lumps in the pudding were intentional or something he should be worried about.

Percy eyed him-from his scuffed army boots to his ripped cargo pants to his chain-riddled bomber jacket. "Dude, you're wearing _eyeliner_. Trust me-it's been long enough."

Nico shrugged. "I guess," he replied, sticking his spoon into the now-empty cup. He set the cup back on the table.

Percy waited.

"Well, I lived at the cape for a while," Nico said, stalling. "Ran the surf shack. Met some kids." Met Will. Maybe fell sort of in love with him, but that was over now.

"What kind of kids?" Percy pestered.

Nico told him about Jason, mostly, and mentioned Frank and Hazel, and left Will out entirely because he had no idea how he was going to explain _that_, and he stressed the point that he was perfectly fine and no, had not gone into total emotional collapse at his cousin's absence. He talked about Frank's illness and Hazel's stupid secret, whatever it was, and then slipped up and said, "and Will told me that she'll come clean when she's ready", and Percy said, "Who's Will?" and that was the end of Nico's peace because his cousin pestered him endlessly until the whole story came out and then they sat for a second in semi-awkward silence.

Percy asked, "So, you're over me, then?"

Nico threw a pillow at his face.


	30. Chapter 30

Percy was lucky, everyone said. The doctors and nurses, the specialists and TV crews, all friends and family and nosy neighbors-every single one of them held the concensus that he should have died, and didn't, and it was a miracle. The only one who didn't think he was fortunate was Percy himself. Nico noticed it almost right away-any time that his disappearance was brought up, the boy would find a way to deflect conversation, either by making a joke or asking, as he had with Nico, what he'd missed while he was gone.

"Why don't you just tell people that you don't want to talk about it?" Nico finally asked, after four days of hearing the same routine with each of their relatives.

Percy looked startled-then he relaxed, and laughed. "I forgot that you were so perceptive," he said.

Nico furrowed his brow. "Answer the question."

"Want to play a hand of cards?" Percy asked.


	31. Return

After three weeks in the hospital, Percy moved to the cape. Nico went with him.

He stood in the doorway of Will's room. He should just call, really-and he would. Eventually. Probably. Even if the very thought made him want to run in the other direction, screaming. It would be easiest to just let Will fade away with the rest of winter, disappear back to California and let him be. Nico didn't _have_ to engage in a relationship jut because he was over Percy; he didn't _have_ to strain to keep in touch, spend more weeks and months of his life missing someone who wasn't there.

And he was so scared of what might happen if he did. Scared of not being special enough for Will, scared of being hurt again; scared, most of all, of becoming a ghost at the cape again, this time haunting the phone instead of the sea, whispering a different name to the empty walls and kindling fires with memories of wrestling matches and card games instead of middle school pranks and bad haircuts.

"Did he sleep here?" Percy asked, startling him.

Nico jumped, heartbeat speeding up to NASCAR levels. "God! Don't sneak up on me like that."

"Did he?" the older boy insisted, peering over Nico's shoulder and into the room. "Because he left some stuff behind, if he did."

"It's stupid stuff," Nico irrationally tried to block the doorway, hiding the stuffed elephant that Will had won down at the pier, the pile of borrowed t-shirts he hadn't gotten around to retrieving yet, the Sharpie-covered scraps of paper taped on every wall, each one crammed with bogus rules and ridiculous contingencies and silly notes and things like _I'll miss you!_ and _Stay warm!_ that were completely innocuous but felt too personal, too telling, to let Percy see.

Percy cocked his head. "Is that an elephant?"

"It's a badly shaped pillow," Nico deadpanned. "What do you want for breakfast?"

"Answers," Percy retorted. "You've told me, like, three things about this guy, and I want to know more."

Nico was about to tell him off, say that if he'd wanted to know so badly than he should have been there, but then an idea occurred to him. "Okay," he said slyly. "We'll play a game. For every question I answer about Will, you answer one about your impromptu island vacation."

Percy dropped the subject faster than a hot iron.

Nico made waffles.


	32. Waiting Again

Nico figured that the universe just wanted him to be miserable. He'd spent years hung up on Percy, and once he'd managed to escape that particular crush, he was now stuck thinking about Will every three seconds. He was destined, he thought ruefully, to be some kind of lovelorn heroine, forever pining for someone he couldn't have.

Which was pretty humiliating. And pathetic. And, oh yeah, _humiliating_.

"It's like you literally cannot live without being depressed about something," Jason said, unrolling his fingers to scatter the dice across the table. As usual, he brought up the one subject that Nico didn't want to talk about.

Nico gave Jason a _look_, the kind that withered flowers and scorched earth and terrified lesser beings, but his cousin completely ignored him in favor of studying the numbers he'd rolled. The death glares rarely worked anymore. "So, I got a three-does that mean I can achieve Olympian status?"

Nico sighed, dropping the look. "No-you also got a seven. That negates the power of the three. Combine that with the other seven that you rolled, and you've actually just been sent to the Underworld."

"I didn't roll two sevens," Jason argued, puzzled, and Nico groaned in exasperation.

"For the _hundredth time_, Jase, you add up the numbers on the red die for your power level. You got a five and a two-that makes seven. Go to the Underworld." He shuffled through the deck of cards on his side, pulled out the single black one, and handed it across the table.

"So . . . what do I do with my figurines?" Jason held up one of the plastic "heroes" Nico had lent him, frowning at it.

Nico sighed again. "You leave the players where they are until you regain your strength and exit the Underworld." Explaining any game to Jason was difficult-poker had been a nightmare-but the guy seemed to find RP games the hardest to understand. Nico didn't want to think it was because Jason was better suited to being a muscle-bound hunk . . . but more than once he'd suggested Jason bow out to help Leo tile the roof or something, and his cousin had been all too eager to agree.

"Okay, okay," Jason said, probably just to get Nico off of his back, and picked another card from the deck. "But, seriously, you should just call him."

"Call who?" Conversation 180, much?

"Will, who else?" Jason asked rhetorically. "Since he left, you've been acting like they stopped airing _Death Note_ on Adult Swim. And you've been wearing black eyeliner again which, frankly, I find creepy. I figure a nice chat with Dr. Sunshine will help clear up any sad or abandoned feelings you might have."

"I don't feel abandoned!" Nico snapped. Sometimes, he thought, Jason was actually smarter than he let on.

"So-I _don't_ move any of my action figures?" Jason asked, and Nico took the thought back.

_a/n-starting with the next chapter, the story is switching to Will's point of view! So this is about the halfway mark in this beast. Updates might be choppy; due to weather, I've been stranded in an airport for a while. Consistent WiFi does not exist! :) Thanks for the reviews and favorites, everyone!_


	33. What Friends Are For

"Move." Lou Ellen nudged Will with her toe, putting her fists on her hips in mock anger as she did so. "You've been moping around for waaaaay too long, my man."

Will, eye level with the gold lame stars on her neon-pink yoga pants, sighed. "I'm not moping."

"You're moping. Trust me, you're moping," she replied, waving bracelet-bangled hands in over-dramatic emphasis. "I know, because you haven't made even one comment about my studio, and you always mock my studio and, oh, I don't know, I haven't seen you smile _once_ since you got back, and that's like the sun rising in the west instead of the east."

Cecil, stacking mats in the far corner of the airy, balsam-wood-and-aluminum space, called out, "She's right, man. You look like you were just told that _Death Note_ isn't on Adult Swim anymore."

Will scowled at both of them. "I'm not moping, so cut it out."

"You're _frowning_," Lou Ellen said in disbelief. "My God, Will, that is an honest _frown_ on your face-I can't believe it!" She pulled out her cell phone-a shiny, barely-a-month-old model-and snapped six or seven pictures as proof. "Wait until I post this on Facebook."

Will half-heartedly raised his hand to block her out. After rambling, ancient houses and shadow-eyed, mysterious boys in black, sunny California was like another planet to him. He was still getting used to the word "selfie" being used in a normal conversation, and even though the ocean still roared outside his window, it was a sun-kissed, friendly thing; not the foreboding monster that had woven Nico into its spell.

"Was being a doctor that good?" Cecil asked, accidentally overturning the pile of mats he'd been making. Lou scowled at him, and he sheepishly began to pick up the mess.

"I was an intern," Will corrected. "That's, like, a million miles away from being a doctor."

"Well, was _that_ so good?" his best friend pursued, ignoring the way that the mats kept sliding out of place the more he tried to fix them. " I mean, that you'd go into solitary meditation once you got back?"

"Obviously not," Lou Ellen scoffed, making her way over to Cecil and taking over his task with annoyance. "There's got to be a girl involved."

Will stared at the wooden floor, wishing the light in Lou's yoga studio wasn't _quite_ so bright.

"He's blushing!" Cecil shouted out. "You're right, Lou!"

Will got up, unfolding his legs stiffly and stretching. "Shut up."

"Do you at least have her number?" Ellen pressed. "Tell me you have her number-if you don't, I swear to God I'll scream."

Will nodded, not sure how he could correct Lou Ellen without it turning into a humongous deal about his sexuality.

Truth was, before he met Nico, Will didn't really think he _had_ a sexuality. He'd gone out with a few girls, and that had been okay, and he'd made out with a few guys at the parties that Lou Ellen dragged him to, and that had been okay, too, and for two solid years he'd sworn he was going to be one of those abstinent monk doctors like in the Middle Ages, and then Lou Ellen had showed him a web page on all of the downsides of never having sex again and he'd recanted that, but he hadn't really gotten around to dating again before being accepted for that internship and then he met Nico.

Maybe he was Nico-sexual. That would make sense. Sort of.

"You're thinking about her again," Cecil accused. "Your face is all red."

"What are you doing, hanging around here?" Lou Ellen demanded. "If you have her number, go call!"

"It isn't that-" Will started, but she had already reached him, digging through his pockets with no regard for personal space. "Lou-Lou Ellen! Stop it!"

She triumphantly yanked his phone out of his back pocket, fingers tapping in his passcode faster than he could have, and scrolled through his contacts. "Alrighty-we have Austin, Cecil, Frank, Hazel-is it Hazel?"

"Give that back!" Will went to rescue his phone, and Lou ducked away from him and behind Cecil, who acted as interference while she invaded his privacy.

"Not Hazel? Well, there's Jason, Kayla, Lee," she went on. "Lou Ellen-hey, that's me!-Michael, Nico-"

"I said, give it back!" Will snapped, trying to reach around Cecil, who batted his hands away easily.

"-and Victoria, and I know she's your older sister, even if you never let me meet her. Huh, those are all the contacts that you have?" Lou Ellen teased. "I guess it must be Hazel, then." She was going to call Hazel. Oh, Lord; she was going to call Hazel, and Will would be mortified, and Lou would say something offensive and Hazel would tell Nico, because she told Nico everything, and then Nico would _never_ call Will and the world would be over. All because of one phone call.

Will's phone buzzed, suddenly blaring one of his favorite character songs, and Lou Ellen jumped. "Someone's calling you," she said, stating the obvious. "It's Nico. Who's Nico?" Before Will could answer-or scream in panic-, she hit Accept and pressed the phone to her ear. "Hello, Nico!" she chirped. "This is Lou Ellen. Will's busy at the moment, trying to subject me to murder most foul."

Will made another go for her, but Cecil caught him by the shoulders, unintentionally using his momentum to swing him to the floor. Will winced as the back of his head cracked against the wood. "Dammit, Cecil!"

"Boys!" Lou Ellen barked. "I am _trying_ to grill Will's new friend, over here!"

"Give me my damn phone, Lou!" Will hollered, struggling to his feet and sprinting at her. Cecil couldn't catch him this time; but it didn't matter, because Lou Ellen swung to the side at the last minute and his fingertips just brushed the phone. It was enough, however, to send it clattering to the floor, the shell spinning in one direction and the battery in the other.

Will glowered at his "friends".

They both found other, more pressing things to be doing.


	34. Talking and Stuff

"So, you've met Lou Ellen," Will said quietly, cradling the phone between his shoulder and his ear as he peeked into his youngest sister's room. Kayla was fast asleep, her cell phone still tightly clutched in her hand, Lou Ellen's last message still lit up on the glowing screen. Will sighed and crossed to the bedside, easing the device out of his sister's palm. He was really starting to miss the solitude of the cape, where the only phone Nico kept was a rotary dial in the kitchen, and you had to head east of Bath to find a computer built after the nineties.

"Briefly," Nico's tone was dry. It wasn't difficult to picture him; sitting at the kitchen table with only the light of the stove, in an oversized black sweatshirt and jeans, looking so alone in Will's mind's eye that it took a lot of willpower to not hop on his laptop and buy a ticket on the first plane heading back east. "She was overwhelmingly nosy."

"She was just excited," Will explained, creeping out of Kayla's room and shutting the door behind him. He checked to make sure that Austin's light was off before heading into his own room. "I don't make many friends."

"You have two that I've heard," Nico pointed out, and Will laughed, more out of habit than amusement. He sat down at his desk, fingers automatically fingering the ancient harmonica that perpetually lived there. His room was a strange amalgamation of biology textbooks, discarded manga, and every musical instrument known to mankind. He had missed it, but now that he was back, he missed the cape more.

"Lou's actually my sister Kayla's friend," he said. "She just keeps an eye on me out of pity. And Cecil is-" Cecil was that guy who never did anything right, and Will was drawn to hopeless cases. At any rate, he'd known the guy since middle school. "-yeah. Okay, I guess I do."

"And Jason, and Leo, and Piper," Nico went on, voice soft in Will's ear. He sounded like he was smiling. Will hoped he was. "And Hazel _loves_ you."

"And you?" Will toyed with the harmonica strap, realized what he'd just asked, and quickly added, "I mean, are _you_ my friend?"

"You're unusually insecure tonight," Nico commented.

"Shut up, asshole. Answer the question."

"Which do you want me to do? Shut up, or answer you?" Nico asked wryly.

Will _missed_ him. He missed him so much. He didn't constantly miss him, but when he did, it was intensely, so much so that he could hardly think of anything else. "Don't be a smartass. Add that to the rule list."

"Are you kidding? I tossed that out as soon as you were out the door," Nico scoffed.

"Lies," Will breathed, leaning forwards and resting his elbows on the desk. "All lies. You framed it, and you're going to keep it for the next ten years in a frame because it's sacred."

"Now you're a fortune teller?" Nico said. He was definitely smiling. Will relaxed. The wave of loneliness receded, the knot in his stomach loosening to more of a tangle.

"I never told you that?" he asked. "I do fortunes on the beach in the summer. Fifty cents a pop. Tell all the tourists their futures."

"What do you say?" Nico sounded genuinely curious, which was a nice change. Will didn't like feeling like he had to compete with a memory for Nico's attention; under his token-giving bravado, he'd been terrified that, once Nico had seen Percy again, he'd forget all about Will.

"All kinds of things. That they'll be rich, or famous," he improvised. "Today, they'll find a lucky coin, or meet their true love. Get eaten by a walrus at Sea World."

"A walrus?" Nico didn't laugh, but his tone got significantly lighter.

"It gets boring," Will defended himself. "I like to be creative." He rolled the harmonica between his fingers, unable to stop fidgeting. Silence stretched between the two phones, and he thought it might be time to hang up.

The clock numbers turned from 10:59 to 11:00. Nico coughed. Will made a "mm" noise like he was about to talk, but never did. He didn't _want_ to hang up.

"So-" Nico started.

"You called," Will blurted out.

"Hazel made me," Nico responded immediately, and then coughed again. "Um-not that I didn't want to."

"My friends think that she's my girlfriend," Will told him, and then winced. "God, I don't know why I just said that."

"Because you don't know when to shut up," was the irate reply. "Why the hell would you date Hazel? I'd kill you."

"Because you'd be jealous?"

"Because you're a _dog_. And she deserves better."

Will laughed, remembering too late that his siblings were sleeping. "Sometimes, Nico, I swear you're-" He broke off.

In the doorway, Michael made a don't-mind-me gesture, which did nothing to pacify Will. He pulled the phone away from his ear and hissed, "What are you doing?"

At eighteen, Michael had only two or three months of school left until freedom; something that prompted him to keep strange hours and almost never sleep in the cramped room that they-reluctantly-had to share. Will rarely missed _him_. Michael sneaked across the room, rummaging through the yellow set of drawers.

"What are you doing?" Will repeated.

"Where do you keep your condoms? I'm out," Michael whispered back.

"Did I just hear what I think-" Nico began, and Will brought the phone back to his mouth for a moment. "Wait a sec, Nicks." He turned his attention to his older brother. "I don't have any."

"How do you not have any? Dad gives all of us a box on our sixteenth birthday," Michael said irately.

"Go to the drugstore or something, I don't have any," Will answered, annoyed. "Yeesh, Mike."

"No, back up to the part where you don't have any condoms," Michael said, which was probably the most humiliating conversation he could think to have with Will at that moment. "Are you not being responsible when you're having sex? Or is the supply not able to meet the demand, if you know what I'm saying?"

"Will you shut up?" Will responded, as sedately as he could manage. "And-get-out!" With each word, he made a violent, slightly crude gesture.

"I hope you don't talk to your girlfriend like that," Mike hissed, ducking out of the room. Will cringed, not sure how much Nico had heard. More than was comfortable, that was sure.

"I feel like your family is even more interesting than mine," Nico said.

"Shut up, _girlfriend_," Will growled.

_a/n-this chapter is awkward and lame and I have no idea what happened, I think my middle school self just took over because I had flashbacks of all the terrible Naruto fanfictions I wrote with sucky humor and questionable dialogue . . . yeah, I'm so sorry guys._


	35. School

School was hell.

Will had kept up with his schoolwork while he was an intern, but after that, in the weeks that he'd ran off to play with Nico at the cape, he'd fallen behind. So he was quite a few weeks behind on his homework, with not that many months left until the end of the year.

"I'm not going to make it," he moaned on Tuesday, leaning on Kayla's shoulders. "Help me, sis."

She shrugged him off, blond hair whisking back and forth. She'd inherited their dad's coloring, but the fine, straight mane(that Will was secretly quite jealous of)reminded him of his stepmom. "Stop it. You'll be fine." She shot him a look, skirting to the side of the hallway to meet up with her tanned, mascaraed-and-lip-glossed posse.

"You're forgetting that Kay is too cool to be seen with us," Austin said dourly. He shoved his glasses farther up his nose and joined the cluster of freshmen by his locker, leaving Will to migrate to his own locker alone.

The girls whispered and giggled, but he ignored them. The boy he'd made out with at his last party before leaving eyed him, but he kept his head down. He got the feeling that all 673 of his classmates were gossiping about where he'd been.

He'd call Nico that night, he resolved, and let that thought carry him through the day.


	36. Everything

"Jason's worried about me," Nico said idly.

"Why?"

"I let Thalia paint my nails black. He thinks I've joined a devil cult."

Will laughed. "You have to send me-" he began, then remembered that Nico didn't have a cell phone. "Never mind."

"Come see me," Nico said persuasively. "I'll show you everything."

There was a short, awkward pause.

"Is that a promise?" Will asked.

"Shut up," Nico retorted.

_a/n-be home soon. chaps will be longer._


	37. Rumors

They were starting to tease him about his girlfriend. It didn't help that Kayla had a mouth bigger than San Francisco Bay; she told Lou Ellen everything that Will did, and then made up a ton, too, so that by the time a week had passed, Will's(small)circle of friends was convinced that he was in awe of this nonexistant girl.

"Do you really kiss her picture goodnight?" Cecil asked, by way of greeting one morning.

Will sighed and shoved his Brit Lit textbook into his locker. "That would be a no, Cece."

"And have a shrine in honor of her in your closet?"

Will slammed his locker shut, shifting his notebook and heavy Calculus tome to his left arm. He turned to Cecil. "Seriously. Stop listening to Kayla. There is no girl." He briefly entertained a fantasy of a Nico-shrine in his closet; little plastic figurines and tarot cards surrounding an iron-framed picture of the boy himself, dressed in black, naturally, and shrouded in shadows, standing on the beach.

He nearly snickered out loud.

"Then who are you calling, _every_ night?" Cecil pressed, drawing him back into the real world.

"Nobod-" Will started, but halted when the phone in his pocket let out a sharp _chirrup_. Frowning, he fished it out and checked the screen.

_Unknown number_.

He opened the text anyway.

_Its Nico is this teh rifht nummer dam texxing is hard_

Will stared at the message for a second, and then burst out laughing. Cecil looked on, concerned, as he clutched at the side of the lockers, entire body shaking with mirth. "Oh my-oh geez-" he choked out.

Lou Ellen came up to them. "What's the matter with Will?"

Cecil shrugged. "He got a text from someone."

"Oh my God," Will snorted, still oblivious. "He's such a _dork_."

"Excuse me?" Cecil looked offended. "I'm just standing here, man-"

Will shoved his books at Lou Ellen. "Save me a seat, I need to head to the bathroom."

"Um-"

He had already disappeared down the hall.

_a/n-BITCHES I'M BACK!_

_...awkward silence. No one cares, okay, moving on . . . Bad news-I'm dropping the number of chapters that I post for the moment, because I'm running out of chapters _to_ post! I mean, I have tons written but none of it is proofread and I'm fairly sure that it sucks at this point so I need to work on that. I'll keeping posting one a day, at any rate, or maybe switch to posting, like, four chapters at the end of every week . . . IDK, I suck at being consistent with this stuff so kind of bear with me while I figure it out. ;) I WILL EVENTUALLY BE DONE WITH THIS MONSTER._

_I hope._


	38. Brothers

"Just stick to calls, okay?" Will chuckled, still amused, running a hand through his hair. It was hard to comfortably talk on the phone while leaning next to a urinal, but the bathroom was the only place he could get away with making a call, without going down to the office, which would be overkill and require an actual emergency, such as losing a finger. So long as he ducked into a stall anytime someone came to actually _use_ the restroom, he figured he'd be all right.

"It's not me," Nico defended himself. "Jason insisted that I get a cell phone. He said everyone has one."

"Pretty much," Will agreed. He was glad to hear that Jason was still around-he liked the guy, buff-sports-jock cliches aside. He was stable. Nico kind of needed stable.

"Percy doesn't. Thalia doesn't. Annabeth doesn't," Nico listed. "There's hardly any reception at the cape, to begin with."

"Well, thanks for making an effort to join civilization regardless," Will replied, sliding down the wall to sit on the icky floor. This put him at head level with the business end of the urinal, so he scooted as far away as the narrow bathroom would permit, his shoulder squashed against one tiled wall.

"I don't like it," Nico said crossly. "I feel ridiculous."

"It's just texting."

Nico was silent. Will figured he was scowling, in that particularly stubborn way that meant he wasn't just upset, he was uncomfortable. Will adjusted his position. "You've seriously never had a cell phone before?"

"There was never enough money," Nico mumbled. Great, now he was making the guy feel even worse. "Not for any of us."

Ouch. Will wished he could go back in time and avoid this conversation; but that wouldn't be fair. Being friends-or whatever the heck he was-with Nico meant bulling through these rough patches. "Well, I have five siblings," he said quickly. "There was never enough money for me, either, until I announced I was spending four months in New York. Kayla and Austin-they're the two who are younger than me-were practically green with jealously."

Nico snorted. "I bet. I remember when Percy got a new Nintendo for his birthday-well, it wasn't new, it was secondhand, but still-Thalia and I used to fight like hell over who could borrow it first."

"And he didn't let either of you use it, right?" Will guessed.

"Pretty much."

"Aren't older brothers fun?"

"A blast," Nico said dryly.

"On my first day of elementary school, my stepbrother, Lee, stuffed my new locker with water balloons. When I opened the door, they all fell out and soaked me," Will shared. "I had to go through the rest of the day with wet pants."

"That's nothing," Nico scoffed. "When I was thirteen, Percy drove us to this big mall upstate-and forgot me there."

"No!"

"Yes! He didn't remember until his mom asked where I was. He had to turn around and make the two-hour drive again. He was grounded for half the year." Nico sounded more affectionate when talking about Percy than Will remembered. He hoped that was a good thing, not a sign that Nico's crush was still going strong . . . or worse, that his feelings were reciprocated by the guy himself.

"Well-" Will started, about to launch into the story of his eighth birthday party and Austin's giraffe obsession. The bell rang, cutting him off. "Oh my G-Nico, I have to go. I just skipped Calc!"

He'd have to worry about Nico later.

_a/n-I know I said I was only posting one chapter today . . . and then I remembered I had also promised some longer chapters, so I quickly proof-read this and threw it up. I don't have a lot of normal dialogue between Nico and Will, like stuff about them getting to know each other. So that's pretty much the only reason this chapter exists._


	39. Journals and Futures

"This is extremely impressive," Dr. Scully said, flipping through Will's medical journal and nodding approval. His curlicue gray hair bobbed along with his nod. "Detailed, comprehensive . . . almost perfect, except . . ." He trailed off, leaving Will nervous.

"Except?" he prompted, squeezing his backpack straps between his fingers.

Dr. Scully turned a few pages, pausing on one to tap the date at the top. "Except that right here, your entries change. You are remarkably observant-a wonderful skill for any aspiring doctor to have-and yet, beginning with this date, your journalings are perfunctory. Thorough, yes, but perfunctory." He peered up at Will, adjusting his glasses. "They lose their life, as though you lost interest in this task."

Will shifted uncomfortably in his chair, feeling the hard plastic digging into his shoulderblades and pressing his rear end flat. He couldn't say for sure, but he gathered from the upside-down date and his own scattered memories that the passage the doctor was talking about was from around the same time he'd first met Nico. It was no wonder his entries were lax, then; he'd been spending all of his time thinking about Frank's mysterious friend. "Really?" he asked, wondering if he could bluff his way out of the coming scolding.

He knew that he couldn't, really. Dr. Scully wasn't just his sponsor-he was also Will's uncle, and he knew better than anyone what Will's journal should read like. Bluffing wasn't an option; Will's best hope was to escape without revealing exactly _why_ his thoughts had been wandering. His friends and siblings might be thrilled that he had someone special in his life; his clinical uncle would not.

The doctor sighed, removing his glasses to massage the two red spots on either side of his nose. "Will . . ." he said quietly, slipping the frames back on. "Do you know how many strings I had to pull, just to get you into that hospital?"

Just the one question was enough to make Will burn with shame, even though he'd done his duties flawlessly. He knew. He appreciated it, even if his actions spoke to the contrary.

"You said you wanted to get out of here, and I got you out," Dr. Scully went on. "I'm doing my best to help you-and even if I didn't, there are a hundred doctors so in awe of your father, they'd fall over themselves to be your mentor." Which was exactly why, when Will had decided to be a doctor, he'd gone straight to his uncle first. He didn't need sycophants who would go easy on him just because of who he was. "You're practically soaked in opportunities that nobody else has, but that is _not_ an excuse to try less. If anything, it's a reason to strive harder-so that not one person can say you got to where you're at because of special favors."

"I know-" Will began, shoulders slumping. As much as he had wanted to be mentored by someone who could be critical, he still hated being called out on his mistakes; more than that, he hated the feeling that he had let Dr. Scully down.

"I expect nothing less than perfection from you, William," his uncle went on. "It's unreasonable and nearly impossible, but I wouldn't demand it if I wasn't sure that you could deliver. So, in light of that, what excuse do you have to offer me for the condition of this journal?"

Will took a page from Nico's book, and shrugged, feeling useless. The only excuse he had was the one that would, without a doubt, cause him to be sent packing at once. _Relationships are entanglements, Will, and entanglements are the one illness that no doctor can afford to have. Look at what happened to your father._

Dr. Scully sighed again. "Do you still _want_ to be a doctor, Will?"

Will swallowed. A year ago, half a year ago, and maybe even three months ago, his answer would have been an immediate yes. But since then, he'd lived at the cape. He'd spent days in salted air and weathered wood, felt cold sand under his feet and the bite of the sea wind. He'd met Nico, who looked up at Will with dark, dark eyes and sucked him into the sea-cast world he was lost in. And that changed Will, a bit; because who wouldn't be changed by that, and he wasn't really sure what he wanted anymore, just that he felt too infinitely old-and, conversely, _young_-to make the decision.

"I see," Scully said, looking down at Will's journal again. He traced the edge of the leather, as if he could read the answer there, and said, more quietly, "Was it the work? Do you not have the stomach for it? There's no shame in saying yes, son. None of us start out able to tolerate it."

"What? No," Will exclaimed, straightening his back and unintentionally dropping his bag to the floor. He'd been grossed out a few times, sure, but never downright disgusted, and never enough that he would quit wanting to be a doctor. "No, that was-it was just-" he stumbled over his own words, stopped, straightened himself out, and said more cohesively, "It was the people, sir." Which was, more or less, the truth.

Dr. Scully raised an inquisitive eyebrow. "Explain."

"I-um-" he stalled, then steadied himself. Count to three, he remembered his mother saying to him on more than one occasion. Get your words in order, and then speak. "I start to care about them. And then I feel like all of my caring is wrapped up in hi-in these patients, and I haven't got any left to use on anybody els-any other patients."

His uncle regarded him skeptically. "You were an intern, Will. I highly doubt they had you doing anything more emotionally involved than delivering care packages." He laced his fingers together on his desk, peering at Will more closely. "Is there something you aren't telling me?"

Will inched back in his chair and shook his head.

Dr. Scully passed the journal back over the desk. "Kayla tells me that you acquired a girlfriend while in New York."

Crap.

"Could she have anything to do with this sudden wavering?"

Will picked up the journal, stuffing it into his book bag. He stood up and hung the bag over his shoulder, reaching back to buckle the strap around his waist. "I can honestly say, Uncle, that this has nothing whatsoever to do with a girl," he said. "And that I need to go, before I'm late for class. I only get an hour off to come here, you know."

Uncle Scully squinted up at him. "All right, boy. Have it your way. But think about our conversation-I don't give internships to young men who aren't serious about their work."

"I understand," Will nodded, backing out of the office as quickly as could be deemed polite.

The hospital halls stretched out in front of him like a twisting maze, and he couldn't count the number of "Hey, Will-how was the trip?" conversations he had to suffer through from his father and uncle's coworkers before he finally hit the doors and emerged into sunlight.

He craned his neck into it, the warmth as familiar as a caress. The uncertainness of what he'd just plunged into hit him. He had always, from the time he was very small, felt that he was meant to help people; to heal them. The natural assumption that followed was that he would be a doctor, like his dad, like his stepbrother, like his uncle. Without that certainty, he had no more idea about his future than he did about astrophysics.

But what if he'd been wrong? His path was turning where it should have been going straight, taking his feet to some unknown territory and leading him to ask the question, what if he hadn't been born to help everybody? What if he was only supposed to help one person?

Like Nico.

_a/n-I didn't just pull the name Scully out of a hat, I derived it from the name of one of Apollo's, like, six thousand sons. I actually kind of hate it . . . just reminds me of the X-Files . . .but it was the only one that could work and, believe me, I spent an entire afternoon trying._


	40. Average

"Dad's on the phone for you," Austin said, tossing Will the old handset with as much delicacy as he would a ten-pound rock. It constantly amazed Will that his younger brother, so adept at hitting a puny target with an even punier arrow, could be absolutely terrible at a simple game of catch.

Will fished the phone out from where it had landed among the mass of sheets and blankets of his unmade bed and held it up to his ear, gesturing for Austin to go 'elsewhere pronto'. "Hi?"

"Will?" His father sounded, like he usually did, _not all there_(as Lou Ellen put it). There was a cacophony of noise in the background that would have pleased Oscar the Grouch; Will guessed that his dad was calling just before a "jam session" with his new band.

"I'm here," he said. "Are you?"

"Yeah, sorry 'bout that," Dad said, completely unremorseful. "Things are a little noisy here."

"Is that so?" Nico's sarcasm must have rubbed off on Will; fortunately, Dad didn't catch the tone.

"Yup, I'm at a band practice. We're getting pretty good!" was the cheerful reply.

Will wondered how much respect his father would have left in the medical community if it was more widely known that A. Solace, MD, was currently going through what the family had lovingly deemed a "grunge phase", and what the rest of the world would call a "mid-life crisis". Probably not much.

"That's good to hear, Dad," he said, wondering what the point of this call was. Dad rarely checked in at the house-and, if he was honest with himself, Will barely noticed. They were all used to the patriarch of the house being absent, if not crossing the country in a rattletrap excuse for a band van, then taking on double and triple shifts at the cardiac hospital which he used to work at.

"Your uncle called me," Dad said, which was a bad sign. Will curled his fingers into his blankets and waited for the blow. "He said you're having doubts about the medical field."

Will had thought he couldn't feel any more ashamed than he had in Dr. Scully's office; he was wrong. His face crimsoned for the tenth time that day as he prepared himself for another disappointed lecture.

"I think it's great!" Dad went on.

"Wh-what?" Will was stunned. Had he misheard? "Dad, what are you talking about? I thought you _wanted_ me to be a doctor."

"Oh, I do," Dad said. "Nothing would make me prouder. But . . . well, you've always been so _set_ on this path, Will. I think it's a good thing that you explore other options. Maybe become more of a jack-of-all-trades."

Will wasn't sure if he was understanding his father correctly. It had been an unspoken understanding in the Solace house for years that every one of them-except Austin, the Olympic-bound genius-would follow in their father's footsteps. They'd learned to read with textbooks and medical reports; listened to lectures on open-heart surgery while still in the crib. Will's mom and first stepmom had been doctors; his second was a nurse. It was in their blood, all of them.

"There are other things you're good at, things you haven't even considered," Dad went on, as if he hadn't just shattered Will's entire view of home life. "Music, for instance."

"Just because you ran away from home to start a band, Dad, doesn't mean I want to, too," Will snapped, before he could stop himself.

Dad just chuckled. "How about a lawyer? You're good at going straight for the jugular. Or one of those guys that makes video games? Or a cheese manufacturer? Or you could do nothing at all. Just mess around in college and be average. Read a bunch of that man-ga-wa stuff you like."

Average? "Who sets out just wanting to be average?" Will asked.

Dad's answer was more wistful-and wise-than he'd expected. "Happy people, Will. Happy people do."


	41. Guess It's Summer Now

School let out.

Will was promoted to eleventh grade, despite his slew of missed classes and barely-passing midterms. His AP work went a long way to help, as did Dr. Scully's glowing report of his month-long internship. No further mention of his uncertain future was made, and gossip about his "girlfriend" died down to a few snarky remarks from Kayla and Lou Ellen's excessive questioning, which was easy enough to dodge with a combination of distraction("Look, Lou-it's that hot guy from Spanish!") and bribery("Change the subject to basketball and I'll treat you and Cecil to smoothies after class. With whipped cream.").

And then Will was standing on the pavement outside his house, a garbage bag full of locker junk at his feet, with a whole three months of Nothing To Do stretched out before him and a terribly catchy Stephen Jerzak song running through his head, courtesy of Kayla's borrowed IPod.

He called Nico.

"'lo?" Nico sounded groggy. Lazy as he was, he was probably still in bed. Will was jealous-he missed the days of sleeping until eleven-thirty and getting up to waffles and a good-natured argument over the strawberry syrup. He pretty much missed any days with Nico in them, at this point.

"I'm scared," Will said without preamble.

There was a rustling noise; Nico sitting up, maybe, and a yawn-like sound, and then Nico, more alert, asked, "Of what?" As if this was a totally rational conversation to be having-that was one of the things that Will like best about Nico. The boy was practically unflappable.

"Well, that's just it." He plunked down on the sidewalk, stretching his legs out into the bike lane of the road. "I don't know. And I'm afraid of not knowing, because I've always known before, and now I don't and it's scary."

There was a pause.

"Was I supposed to follow that?" Nico asked. "Because if you expected me to follow that, you should have called after I'd been awake for a few hours."

Will sighed and cradled his head in one hand. "Never mind. It's just something I have to sort out for myself."

"Oh."

Silence. Will wondered if Nico had lay back down; if he was in bed right then, comfy and still partially asleep, surrounded by warmth and softness and, above all, no pressing need to think of his future. No worries, no problems. Will would have given anything to be there at that moment.

"What are you going to do with your life?" he asked, pulling his garbage bag out of the way of a mom walking by with her kid. The little boy stuck his finger in his nose and pulled a face at Will. Will pulled one right back, thinking that the kid reminded him of Austin, back when Austin was cute and not kind of dorky and adverse to spending time with Will outside of an archery range.

"Do?" Nico sounded like he'd never thought about the idea. His voice in Will's ear was puzzled.

"Like, for a living."

"I'm fifteen," Nico said. "Why would I think about that?"

"Because everyone does. You must have, like, a dream," Will pressed, feeling like he'd just stepped out of a Lifetime movie. He was sure that Nico was going to laugh at him, but instead there was a short silence, like the boy was seriously thinking about the question.

"Maybe," he said after a moment. "Maybe, a long time ago. I think I might have wanted to be an astronaut, but all little kids want that at one point or another."

"Or a cowboy," Will added, and Nico laughed softly. "Or a cowboy," he agreed.

"But what about right now?" Will asked. Nico made a hmm-ing noise.

"I don't know. See my dad, I guess? Like, for more than ten seconds on Skype before his next board meeting. Go back to Italy. Move out of the Jacksons' apartment. Get a decent job. I've kind of always wanted to work at a comic book store."

"A comic book store?" Will laughed. It was probably the last thing he'd expect to come from Nico; he'd sooner picture the boy working as a roadie, or in a book store. Or a mortuary.

"Nobody said dreams have to be grand," Nico defended himself. "They just have to make you happy."


	42. Dreams

Will had dreams, but they were ridiculous, half-baked ones; little more than passing thoughts or wisps left over from sleeping, traces of longing mixed up with an aching of sadness for nameless things. They clouded his mind while he was awake, filled them with forgotten images while he was asleep.

He dreamed of Nico working in a comic book store, and he put himself in that dream, bringing the boy coffee for his break and buying the latest issue of Sandman just for an excuse to be there; but that wasn't his own dream. It was just an extension of someone else's.

His own dreams were abstract-an olive skinned hand clutched tightly around his on the whish-whish-flick of a roller coaster ride, the rumble of the track in his head drowning out everything but the feel of that skin over his; a ghost of a person behind him while he fried eggs for breakfast, just watching him, love heavy in sloe eyes; the sight of a black t-shirt thrown casually over the end of his bed, an imprint of its owner left behind to comfort Will before a long shift at the hospital.

His vision didn't stretch beyond weeks or months; rarely left the confines of a life with Nico in it. It didn't take reality into consideration at all, barely blinked when Will reminded it that he and Nico weren't together-together, that maybe Nico had different plans, that life rarely went the way that it was planned in heads and hearts. It ignored rationality altogether in favor of wild, unlikely, up-in-the-clouds fantasies.

And when Will finally returned to the real world, set his feet on the ground with salty sweat dewing the small of his back and sleep-grit clouding his eyes to anything but the shadowed imprints of his dreams on the back of his eyelids, all he could think of was seeing Nico again, a pulse that beat under his skin until he thought the boy's name might appear branded on his body.

It made deciding what to do next that much easier.


	43. (hey, how's the weather up there?)

"Does that offer still stand?" Will asked.

"What offer?" Nico was by the ocean that day; Will could hear the whish-whish-whish of waves in the background. Shouts and laughter punctuated each gust of wind or crest of sea; at least, he though grudgingly, Nico wasn't alone there.

"I can visit the cape?"

"Of course," Nico said, too quickly. He backpedalled. "I mean, if you want to. For as long as you want to. Um, if you _do_ want to."

Will smiled. "I want to."

_a/n-this will never, ever, ever, ever, EVER happen again. Three chapters in one day? Happy Birthday or something; I just didn't want to drag this part out for more than a day. Will's going back to Nico, yup, okay, moving on. But I didn't want to post it all as one chapter . . ._

_I'd also like to thank those people who have near-religiously posted comments on this story so far-yup, I'm lookin' at you. Don't get me wrong, I love all reviewers equally(even the nasty ones), but you guys are the best! Thank you so much!_


	44. Family Meeting

"So what's with the conference?" Michael asked, his knee jiggling impatiently. "I have a gig in, like, twenty minutes." He shifted in his seat, edging farther away from Lee, who was notorious in his disapproval of his younger brother's band.

"This won't take long," Will promised, despite the annoyance that prickled through his brain at his family's inability to spend more than seven minutes in the same room together. He should be used to it; he wasn't. Not when he could still remember when things were different, when their diverse lives tangled in and around each other's, like a snarl of yarn, instead of shooting off in eight separate directions without so much as a see-you-later.

Kayla said, fingers still flying over her phone, eyes glued to the LED screen, "Is this about the plane tickets you bought yesterday?" She shrugged a tendril of blond hair over her shoulder, reminding Will of a horse twitching a fly off of its flank.

"You bought plane tickets?" Austin asked.

"Where are you going?" Mike questioned at the same time, and Lee tacked on a irate "Without telling us?"

"Guys, guys!" Will made a "shush" gesture. "I'm not going anywhere without telling you. I'm telling you right now. I'm going back to New York."

One beat. Two. He took in the fish-eyed stares and blank expressions; even Kayla drew her attention away from her precious phone for long enough to treat him to a wonderful impression of a deer in headlights.

One beat. Two. Then-

"I totally win!" Mike crowed, thrusting his chair away from the table and pumping his fist in the air. "Twenty bucks, Austin-he does _so_ have a girlfriend there!"

"He said he didn't," Austin defended himself, shoving his glasses up his nose like he did when he was irritated. "No way, man."

"A bet is a bet!" his brother reminded him. "So pay up on your debt!" He opened and closed his hand expectantly, smirking at his "clever" rhyme.

"Will you _finally_ tell us about her?" Kayla asked.

"What makes you think you can just pack up and leave for New York?" Lee said, sounding somewhat panicked. "That's totally insane. Dad-"

Will shushed them again, fighting the eye roll that was dying to emerge from the twelve-year-old self still lurking in the back of his subconscious. "I'm going to New York," he reiterated calmly. "It's decided and done. I have a job, and a place to stay, and Dad already okayed it."

"He did?" At another time, the family's harmonic reply would have made Will laugh-but he was too busy trying to figure out how he was going to break the next bit of news to them. He wasn't nervous, per say; but he hated making a big deal over something he'd prefer to let emerge quietly.

Ah, well. With a prayer for an average, happy life, Will cleared his throat and said, "There's something else I should probably tell you." He spoke with uncharacteristic solemnness; his family reacted about as well as could be expected.

"Oh my God, the girl's pregnant!" Michael shouted, pounding a hand on the table. "Man, I _told_ you to use condoms!"

"Hang on, you _knew_ he was having sex?" Lee demanded, ever the oldest brother. He glowered at Michael, no doubt already figuring a way to place the blame solely on him.

"I'm not-" Will started.

"I'm going to be an auntie! Wait 'til I tell Lou Ellen!" Kayla squealed, taking up her phone again with more enthusiasm than he'd seen her exhibit in years.

"NO!" Will shouted, past the point where he had the desire-or patience-to mollify them quietly. "God, you guys-I didn't get a girl pregnant! Kayla, put down the fricking phone-I'm trying to tell you that I'm gay!"

The table went quiet.

Will passed a hand through his hair. "Okay, that could have gone better . . ." And his wording could have been more delicate, and his timing could have used some work, and-hell, he'd pretty much walked right into the situation he was trying to avoid.

"Does Dad know?" Lee demanded.

Will snorted at the memory. "His exact words were "you're telling me this now . . . _why_?". He didn't seem surprised." But Dad was-if Will were to be completely honest-flighty. And the tiniest bit uncaring when it came to his children; oh, he loved them alright, but as long as they were happy, he didn't seem to feel the need to know any of the little details of their lives. Will's new boy toy was probably just another potential song to Dad, which was fine by him.

He kind of wished the rest of the brood was the same way.

"But . . . you've had girlfriends," Kayla protested, setting her phone down with obvious reluctance. "You went to second base with Katie Green behind the bleachers last . . ." she trailed off, blushing under Lee's sudden scrutiny.

"Ejected From the Game?" Austin suggested. "Or maybe he's just bi."

"He could be genderfluid," Michael put in. "I've heard of that."

"I doubt you even know what that _means_," Lee said, still looking mildly shocked that he was having this conversation.

"Pangender," Austin put in, snapping his fingers. "That could totally be a possibility."

"Are you done deciding what I am?" Will interrupted their powwow. This was pretty much exactly why he didn't want to tell his family outright. "First off-shut up. The more you guys talk, the more it become apparent you have no clue what you're talking about. Secondly," he took a breath, "I'm still a freaking guy, you morons. I'm not confused about that. I'm not confused about _anything_. I just happen to like this one guy, which brings me to _third_-my relationships are none of your business. So get off my back about this girlfriend that, as I've repeatedly told you, does not exist. And if, in the future, I _do _happen to date a girl, or stick to dating guys, or go completely off the wall and call myself a geranium, I'll thank you to keep your observations about my sexuality to yourself. Okay?"

Mike frowned. "Fine, fine-can I leave now? Or do I have to start taking notes because there's going to be a quiz later?"

"So you _do_ like girls?" Kayla scrunched her eyebrows together. "Or were your past girlfriends just, like, beards?"

Will groaned. "Can we just leave it at 'I have a boyfriend and you're going to be happy about it because you love me'?"

Kayla pursed her lips.

"But you _are_ having safe sex, right?" Lee asked, concerned. "Because I have six or seven pamphlets back at the office on the hazards of-"

"Okay, geez!" Will covered his ears with his hands. "I do _not_ want to hear this!"

His stellar family just laughed.

_a/n-I just wanted to say that I'm no expert on human sexuality, and that in the world today it's nearly impossible to define a gender group or sexuality without offending _someone_. This is _just my view_ on how I think that Will would feel and how his family-who coincidentally are as ignorant as I am-would react._

_ And I'd also like to point out that Rick Riordan never specifically said that Will was gay. Or that he had anything more than friendly feelings towards Nico._

_ (ducks various thrown objects)Oh my God, you guys hate me now . . ._


	45. The Cape

The cape had received a makeover while Will was gone. The coat of gray paint was new, not peeling, and the treacherous porch had been repaired with fresh wood and furnished with rocking chairs and a glider. The hyacinth bushes in the front yard were no longer scrubby tumbleweeds perched atop snowbanks; they sported tiny green buds and lavender-tinted sprouts of branches. Even the sky looked different; a bright, clear blue instead of the muted colors it showed during winter.

Summer had come to the cape, and it was no longer as familiar as it had been.

Half a dozen cars were crammed into the driveway, leaving no place for Will to park his rental but the lawn, and as he mounted the steps to the porch, he saw sandals and sneakers-far too many to all be Nico's-scattered in the grass, along with soda cans and stray bicycles and one lonely-looking surfboard. Someone had graffitied _All Da Ladies Luv Leo_ across one of the cape's windows in what Will hoped was that washable glass paint. There was an American flag hanging from the previously empty pole-holder, and Will could hear voices coming from around the back of the house.

He rang the doorbell regardless, feeling too much like a stranger to do anything else.

A blond girl with a Beatles t-shirt and a thick French braid opened the door, frowned at him, and said, "Sorry. We aren't renting out rooms now."

"Uh-" Will blanked. He didn't want to be the chump going "but I know so-and-so"; at the same time, he didn't know how to explain who he was without involving Nico, who apparently had not told anyone that Will was coming. "I'm not-"

"Heads up!", a boy yowled, and Will and the girl both ducked as a Frisbee flew over their heads and into the house. Something inside crashed, followed by a shout of, "PERCY! You are so dead!"

Will nearly got whiplash, he turned so fast to see Percy.

For all of the fuss and bother, the weeks of chipping away at Nico's shell to hear about the guy, when he finally came face-to-face with Percy Jackson, Will was completely unimpressed. Percy looked like one of the troubled kids back at Will's school-the ones that were on ten different medications and lit fire to cotton balls in the back of History class just for kicks. It was easy to see his resemblance to Nico-they had the same skinny frame and dark hair, straight nose and short height; but while Nico could stay like stone, his body totally hushed, Percy fidgeted and shook as if he had Huntington's. He drabbled his fingers on his thigh, jiggled his left leg, and shifted position every half second. He looked like a disaster; he looked exactly like the kind of guy that Nico would be into.

The only redeeming feature that Will could find were his eyes; green and gold, they were like the dragonfly marbles that Kayla used to collect when she was little. They wandered from the doorway, to the girl inside it, to Will, where they focused and became intent.

Will shifted uncomfortably. "Um. Hi."

"You're Nico's . . ." Percy said, and trailed off, leaving Will to wonder what, exactly, he was of Nico's.

"Yeah," he said, for lack of a better reply. "I'm Nico's."

Percy's ears turned red. "Oh, crap-that wasn't what I-I mean, God-dude, sorry-"

Will snorted. "That's probably the best thing anyone's said about me and Nico. Don't apologize."

"Well, if you didn't play things so close to the chest," a familiar voice scolded, and Will turned in time to see Hazel nudge her way past the blond girl. She gave him a huge smile and a hug. "Hi, Will."

"Hey, Haz. What's up?" Will was pretty glad to see a face that wasn't looking at him as though he should be in a museum, with a placard that read _First Guy Nico Brought Home_.He squeezed Hazel briefly and then let go. "How's Frank?"

She shrugged, and he regretted his words when he noticed the shadow it brought to her brown eyes. "He's . . . Frank. He plays a lot of games and doesn't answer direct questions about his health."

Will frowned. That didn't sound good.

Percy climbed the porch steps, standing in front of Will, and held his hand out to shake. "Hi. I'm Percy. That's Annabeth-" he jerked his head towards the blond girl, who rolled her eyes and disappeared back into the house. "I guess you know Hazel already, huh?"

Will resisted the urge to tell the boy that he'd known Hazel first. It wouldn't be a good idea to pick any bones with Nico's cousin . . . yet. So he put on a big smile and shook Percy Jackson's hand and kept telling himself that Nico was over the guy. Really.

Probably.


	46. The Beginning of Summer

Will couldn't get an accurate answer as to how many teenagers were staying at the cape.

"A lot," Percy said vaguely. Hazel shrugged. And when Will tried to count for himself as he walked through the living room and down the hall to the bedrooms, he couldn't keep track. Two guys, far too identical to be anything but brothers, played some kind of penalty game with Leo that mostly involved all three of them throwing paint at a nervous-looking boy with curly hair and a weasely face; a glasses-wearing Jason fought with a tanner, taller Piper, and a dark-haired girl in a purple hoodie scowled at Will for nearly trampling on the tail of one of her two enormous grayhounds.

He was pretty sure it was all the motion that had him confused, because there was no way that his final total of thirty-three was accurate. There simply wasn't enough room for that many kids.

"What are you doing?" Hazel asked, as he raised a hand to knock on the door of Nico's bedroom.

"Knocking . . . ?"

"That's Percy's room," she explained, pushing him past the door. "Nico's room is further down."

"But-he slept-" Will twisted around, pointing to the door. Nico's words came back to him. _I sleep outside. I like it-there's so much sky. _He'd assumed that, when Nico wasn't sleeping outside, he was using the room that he'd used in the winter.

But that room was Percy's room. He'd been sleeping in Percy's room.

Will swallowed, feet slowing down. Thirty-nine hours too late, the thought occurred to him that maybe this was a bad idea.

"Will!" Hazel pushed him impatiently. "What are you doing?"

"He slept in Percy's room," Will whispered.

"Yeah? So-" she stopped. "Oh." Then she shook her head, corkscrew curls bouncing. "He missed his cousin, Will. That's all."

"He was in love with him."

"Are you really going to drop everything and be the drama queen now?" Hazel, ever practical, demanded. "Because if you are, I'm going to leave you here to Reyna's mercy."

One of the grayhounds yipped, and the dark-haired girl-Reyna-dragged her gaze from the still-bickering Jason and Piper long enough to shoot Will another poisonous look.

Will got over his drama-queen tendencies quickly, propelling himself forwards of his own accord. Regardless of whether this was a bad idea or not, he was committed now. Hazel directed him to the right door. "He's been more social than before, but he still shuts himself in here every now and again," she commented. "I mean, I usually assume that he's calling _you_, but-"

Will shot her a look, both eyebrows raised. She dimpled and backed away. "Well-anyway. I'll let you guys . . . um, do whatever."

Will tried not to dwell on what she meant by "do whatever", and knocked on the door.

"Hazel, I'm fine, I haven't died, I'm not cutting, and I ate, like, twenty minutes ago. Frank brought me Doritos." Nico's monologue was laced with affectionate exasperation; clearly, Hazel had been looking after him well. Will smiled and leaned on the door frame.

"Doritos are _not_ a meal," he declared. "Clearly your junk food addiction has worsened without me to keep an eye on you."

_THUD_. Will smirked, hearing several heavy objects being displaced in Nico's haste to get to the door. Seconds later, it flew open and Nico stood there, black eyes wide.

The cape might have changed, but its longest occupant had not. Will took in the thin frame, baggy sweatshirt, mismatched socks. Nico still had bags under his eyes-would he ever not?-and thick, dark hair that covered his face nicely, like a curtain. He was not alien, or summer-touched, or grown.

Will had expected to feel elated when he was finally eye to eye with Nico, or maybe relieved, or-cliched as it was-that he'd finally come "home" or something like that. But none of those emotions spiraled to the surface. He felt no different than if he'd just been in the other room for an hour, and had seen Nico a thousand times in the past twenty-four hours.

Seconds ticked by-too much time passed for Will to get away with a spontaneous glad-to-see-you hug, or even a I-know-full-well-what-I'm-doing-isn't-spontaneous hug.

Nico gave him what might have constituted a smile, if one went by goblin standards. "Um, hey."

Will scratched his neck. "Hi." He licked his lips, self-conscious. Unlike in every romance novel Will had had the misfortune to overhear coming from Kayla's CD player, Nico didn't watch his lips. That would have required yanking his vision from Will's eyes, which was apparently a no-go.

"For God's sake, get a room already," Reyna called from down the hall. One of her grayhounds snarled its agreement, and Nico seized Will by the sleeve-Will couldn't help but notice how careful the other boy was not to touch him-and dragged him into the room, shutting the door behind them.

"Reyna's kind of a bitch," Nico said, flopping down onto his bed, which was covered in Walking Dead comics and extension packs of his favorite card game, which involved Greek gods and figurines and bored the hell out of Will, who preferred _Magic: The Gathering_. "But she has a zero-bullshit policy that I can respect."

"Umm." Will made a noncommittal noise. "So, uh, what's up?"

He wasn't used to this room of Nico's-he was used to the bare wood, white-sheeted, perpetually chilly space that housed a contrastingly black figure, one that Will had to fight to get a smile out of. This place was warm, full to the brim of Nico's personality, from the death metal band posters on the closet door to the string of brightly painted beads hanging on the corner of the mirror. Two bean bag chairs-one purple, one green and half-empty of whatever-it-is-that-fills-bean-bags(beans?)-were thrown carelessly to one side of the room, opposing an old TV set resting on Nico's sticker-plastered set of drawers.

The wall over Nico's bed carried a collage of the notes that Will had taped to his own wall forever ago, one of the t-shirts he had left behind in the hope that Nico would adopt them, and, cruelly pinned up by her floppy ears, the stuffed elephant he'd spent ten dollars trying to win in a bottle toss.

"That-that right there is animal abuse," he said, pointing to the elephant and seizing on the distraction. "I'm pretty sure that Ella did not ask to be treated in such a fashion."  
Nico snickered. "Well, Percy and Frank gave me shit about keeping it on my bed."

"_Her_," Will insisted. "She is a female. And Percy and Frank don't know jack." He climbed onto the bed, doing his best not to notice the way his weight pressed down the mattress, gravity drawing Nico's body to his, and pulled the two tacks out of Ella's ears. She fell neatly into his arms, and he collapsed down next to Nico, settling her on his chest. "See? She's much happier now."

"She's a stuffed animal," Nico said. His hair was brushing Will's ear. He reached out and touched Ella's snout. "Just a bunch of stuffing inside some fake fur."

Will pretended to cover Ella's ears, squashing them flat against her head. "Shush! You're hurting her self-esteem!"

Nico laughed. He actually laughed-Will nearly died from the shock. "You're ridiculous."

"And you're happy." Will didn't mean to make the atmosphere solemn, but the words came out with more gravity than he intended. He turned his head to look at Nico, who was staring at the ceiling. When he swallowed, Will watched the curve of his throat bob up, then down.

"Yeah," Nico said softly. "I guess so."

"It wasn't a question."

Nico exhaled. "What do you want from me, Will?" He closed his eyes, the long, dark lashes just brushing his cheekbones.

Will eased himself up onto one elbow. "What I've always wanted." Had he ever been unclear? No-it was Nico who danced around the subject, faded through Will's fingers every time he tried to get close, slipped away and into the sea rather than answer the real question. It was Nico who fronted and stalled and kissed but then turned away.

"That doesn't help me any." Nico scowled without opening his eyes.

"It wasn't meant to be helpful." Will hovered over Nico for a second, indecisive, before bending his head down to kiss the other boy.

The first time that he'd kissed Nico, he'd thought it might also be the last time-that their abstract relationship had already ended, even before the discovery that Percy was alive and relatively well. So he hadn't been scared, or timid, or shy-he didn't have anything to lose at that point.

This was different-more the brush of noses, exchange of breath, feel of Nico ever-so-carefully stretching his head up to Will, like a plant curving into sunlight. Will leaned on one hand, and extended the other to weave into Nico's.

For a long time, all he could feel was the overwhelmingly fast, hard beat of his heart; almost sacrilegious in its intensity; and the bones of Nico's hand, crushed against his. The kiss itself hardly registered at all-he was too absorbed with everything else, everything outside of himself and Nico, like the sounds still coming from the hallway, the shouts and laughter and barking, the fold of the bedsheet digging into his bare knee, the stiffness in his neck, the emotional turbulence that could accurately be compared to the plot of _Lost_.

It was more the limits of his own body that forced him to move things up a notch-he couldn't stay looming over Nico forever. His back was starting to hurt.

But when he closed the distance between them, turning the light kiss into something with tongue and body and their chests pressed together in a way that-impossibly-sped up his heartbeat even more, Nico made a sound of objection, pushing him away, this time physically.

Will, leery of making him uncomfortable, shot up like there was a rubber band attached to his waist; so quickly, in fact, that he lost his balance and fell square on his ass on the braided rug. "Dammit!" He winced, resisting the urge to rub the sore spot.

"Are you okay?" Nico had pulled himself up, too, and was flat against the wall, knees to his chest, clearly in a defensive stance.

"I'm fine," Will grumbled. "Next time, just tell me to stop."

Nico's face was red. "It's not-I'm sorry."

"What is it?" Will asked. "Too fast? Too horrible? You finally realized what a loser I am?" His lip twitched on the last one, and he had trouble keeping the twitch from blossoming into a smile. Being serious under pressure was not one of his strong points.

Nico curled his arms around his knees and didn't respond.

Will got up from the floor, cautiously easing back onto the bed so that he was kneeling in front of Nico. "Hello? Anyone home?" he asked quietly. When this got no reaction, he brushed Nico's hair out of the way with the palm of his hand and kissed him again, this time retreating after a millisecond of contact.

Nico buried his head in his arms.

Will took the hint and left.

_a/n-what is this? Just . . . what _is_ this? I don't even know. But hey, it's hella long. Will's perspective is a lot less wistful than Nico's._


	47. Space and Time(no continuum)

"Just give him time," Hazel advised. After seeing Will's dejected face, she'd badgered him until he confessed the whole story to her. "After what happened with Percy, he kind of needs it."

Will groaned, scrubbing at his eyes. "Crap. I screwed my chances up, didn't I?"

"Of course you didn't." Hazel was so sweet-even if she did lie horribly. "Nico just needs a little . . ."

"Time?" he guessed.

"Space. But time, too. Be patient, and let him take the lead."

Sometimes, Will thought Hazel must be some kind of saint. Even if she did give lame advice.

_a/n-here, have a two-chapter apology for me not updating promptly :( :(_

_Sorry, it's been crazy on this side of the screen . . . which translates to "I was up until 1:30 AM reading these awesome Jasico fics on AO3 and totally fell off of the Solangelo wagon . . .". But, fear not! I will bring Nico and Will together eventually!_


	48. Bonfires

There was a bonfire on the beach that night.

"It's kind of a tradition," Nico said, twisting the hem of his sweatshirt around his fingers. "You can stay in, if you want."

Will stuffed his duffel bag under the bunk he was sharing with Grover, Percy's best friend. He had been delegated to the overflow space set up in one of the unused rooms upstairs; while he had a lovely view of the ocean, he had to share it with two other guys, one of which appeared to have a religious objection to soap.

"Are you going?" he asked Nico, who nodded.

Will slapped his hands on his thighs, relieved that he'd managed to fit all of his clothes in the narrow space under the bed, and got to his feet. "Then of course I'm going, too."

Nico wrung his hands together, pulling his legs up onto the mattress and folding them into a pretzel. "Um-Will?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm sorry about earlier," he mumbled, like it was all one word.

Will dropped onto the bed next to him, pulling one leg up under the other. "It's okay. I should apologize, too." He felt the tips of his ears burning. "I didn't mean to pressure you or anything."

Nico shook his head and fingered the frayed hem of his black jeans, staring at the mattress between them. "It's not that. It's just that I was . . . I mean . . . what are we?"

Will stared at him blankly, his mind throwing up only smartass answers. "Um . . . humans? Boys? Teenagers?"

Nico rolled his eyes, probably covering his self-consciousness with scorn. "I mean _us_, moron. Like-" he gestured between them. "_Us_, us. Are we . . friends? Or, uh, y'know?"

"Y'know?" Will asked skeptically. "Is that an official relationship status?"

"God, I told you it was stupid," Nico snapped, going to get up. Will snagged his sleeve. "Hey, hey," he said, dragging the other boy down. "Wait. This is something we should definitely talk about."

Nico groaned. "Seriously? I'm sorry that I-"

"Maybe we should take a poll," Will suggested. "Or draw a flow chart. Or-"

"I get it, I get it," Nico shrugged his hand off. "I'm making a big deal about nothing."

Will grabbed his sleeve again, this time making sure that Nico's wrist was sandwiched between the fabric as well. "I think it's cute," he said, which didn't help matters much.

"Shut up." Nico was obviously embarrassed, refusing to look at Will and trying to wrestle out of the other boy's grip. "It's just that you've been following me everywhere since, like, we met and I just want to know what you want from me, geez." He spoke all in one breath. "Especially now that Percy . . ." He shrugged vaguely. "Well, y'know."

"Oh." Will slowly let go of him, face crimson. "Um, you _did_ kiss me, so I thought that we. . ."

"Yeah, but I didn't mean to-uh, that, it was just-" Nico stammered. "There was a lot going on-"

"If you don't want to-" Will backtracked quickly. "We don't have to-I mean, we can just be-"

"Like before-" Nico completed.

"Yeah," Will said.

"Or else-"

"But we could-"

"Date."

One of them said it; maybe they both said it at once.

It hovered between them, and ominously commitment-filled word. Will monitored Nico's face closely, looking for any sign of what the boy thought of the idea. His chances were not looking good.

"Listen, I just came to hang out with you," Will said rapidly. "That's all that I'm asking. That's all I was ever asking."

"Not earlier," Nico shot back, and then winced. "God, forget that I . . ."

"No, you're right." Will got to his feet. He wasn't hurt, exactly, but the fact that he was being rejected was crystal clear. It helped that he knew it wasn't completely him; that Nico was struggling, that Percy was involved, that there simply hadn't been enough time for them to form a strong enough bond for Nico to trust him. "Just friends, okay?"

Nico nodded, eyes still glued to his jeans. His voice was barely above a whisper. "Yeah. Just friends."

_a/n-well, this sucks._


	49. Various Things Are Burned

Leo was in charge of the bonfire, which worried Will. The boy liked to throw anything he could get his hands on into the fire, including-but not limited to-soda cans, gasoline, driftwood that turned the flames strange colors, abandoned sweatshirts, empty plastic marshmallow bags, _full_ plastic marshmallow bags, and Piper's hairbrush, which melted almost instantly even though that shouldn't have been scientifically possible.

And argument broke out between Percy and Jason over nothing that anyone on the outside could see, and it ended with Annabeth dragging Percy away from the fight by his ear and Jason nursing a black eye next to Piper.

Hoping to keep the peace, Will started a sing-along.

Sometime during the fifth round of the Spongebob Squarepants theme song, Percy and Annabeth slipped away to walk on the beach.

Will watched Nico, watching them, and tried not to be unsettled by the wistfulness crossing the other boy's face. He couldn't help but think that Nico's reluctance to enter a relationship had still something to do with Percy, despite the other boy's insistence that his romantic feelings were gone.

Jason nudged Will, dislodging him from his unusually-but understandably-gloomy thoughts. "We're almost out of marshmallows, man. Could you and Nico run up to the gable and get another bag?"

Will frowned. "But there's one right-"

Jason nudged him again. Hard. "C'mon, Will. Be a sport."

Be a sport? Who even said that anymore? Regardless, under Jason's stony stare, Will got to his feet and beckoned Nico away from the fire.

They walked out in silence, a chill flowing straight through Will's thin t-shirt as they stepped out of the halo of orange warmth provided by the fire and into the cool, moon-kissed expanse of sand.

"Sooo, Jason's about as subtle as a crowbar," Nico said conversationally. "I mean, the crate of marshmallow bags was _right there_." He didn't mention their uncomfortable conversation from earlier; so Will didn't, either.

"He could have at least tried to hide it," Will snickered, all-too-willing to fall back into their old patterns.

"What are we even supposed to do? The gable's totally empty-not even a jar of peanut butter." Nico rolled his eyes.

"I think that's the point," Will said meaningfully, and then, when he realized Nico didn't understand, more slowly, "The gable's completely _empty_." He made a rude gesture.

Nico halted, face paling. "They wouldn't-"

Hazel ran up to them, dress flapping around her legs, nearly breathless. She stopped herself by catching Nico's arm and leaning on it until she caught her wind. "I just-wanted to tell you-" she panted out, "-that we're going to be staying at the cape tonight. So, y'know, nobody's going to be at the gable. All night long. Um, just letting you know."

She ran back to the fire.

"I think it's safe to say that they would," Will said.


	50. Car Talks

So they lazed around on the hood of Jason's car, watching stars side-by-side and making idle conversation. Will pretended that he wasn't worried, and Nico-well, Nico was just Nico, and his thoughts and worries were impossible to discern.

"Hazel's still looking for her brother," Nico said at one point. "She's been going through the birth registries at the library." He didn't sound confident that she'd have success.

Will laced his fingers together on his stomach. "Still hasn't given you any details?"

"Nope." Nico paused. "It's almost like she's making an excuse to be here, you know?" He sighed, a puff of air that tickled Will's ear. "Their whole story is completely fishy."

"Fishy?" Will mocked. "Is that so, Mr. Holmes? Is the game afoot?"

Nico shoved him, rocking the car dangerously. "Shut up. I'm just saying-she's looking for a brother she's never met. She doesn't know his name or what he looks like, and the one clue she has, supposedly, is that he lives here. How does she even know that? Who would tell her, 'oh, you have a brother, he lives in the Bath area', and that's it? Nobody. Nobody would do that to a person. They would give directions, or explanations, or at least a little more than a location." He whuffed in exasperation, flopping back onto the windshield with a dull thump.

"You sound really concerned," Will observed, rolling onto his side and propping his head up with his arm so that he could see Nico's profile, outlined against the lighter backdrop of the lawn. Nico sighed again, stretched his hand up as if he could touch the sky. Curled it back to his stomach. When he spoke, he sounded more pensive, and it was easier to guess the kinds of things that Nico worried about.

"I care about Hazel, that's all."

Will leaned over and pressed a kiss to the other boy's jaw, even though he knew he shouldn't push his luck for the day. "I kind of love that about you."

Despite the darkness, he could tell that Nico was blushing.


	51. Secrets

Percy had a secret.

Will didn't mean to find it out; he meant to stay as far away from Percy as possible. But he'd also had a one-gallon bottle of soda that night at the campfire, and he woke up around two in the morning needing to pee.

"-can't come!" Percy's voice hissed out in alarm.

Will froze. He was just passing by the kitchen, trying to get back to his room without tripping over one of the various objects that Percy and Jason's earlier Silly String war had disrupted.

"No, I know," Percy said, more softly; Will had to strain to hear him. "It's just that things are a little difficult. Mom's still in commando mode since I disappeared, and Nico's-yeah, I know I don't have to worry about Nico, but he's still family . . ." Pause. Will eased around an overturned lamp and pressed himself to the wall, next to the doorway to the kitchen. It sounded as though Percy was directly on the other side, hidden only by the enormous fridge.

"-and Annabeth." Will caught only the tail end of the last sentence.

He felt kind of bad-he wasn't an eavesdropper by nature-but Percy had mentioned Nico, and Will was kind of a sucker for all things Nico. He craned his neck, getting his ear closer to the doorway.

"No, I haven't told her yet," Percy said, sounding annoyed. "That's what I've been trying to tell you. It's complicated-well, what am I supposed to tell her?" Pause. "Oh, yeah, I'm sure that'll go over well," he said sarcastically. "Look, why don't you just-" Long pause. So long that Will began to feel uncomfortable and antsy. Had Percy hung up? Was he about to come around the corner and discover Will?

"I'm just asking for a little more time!" Percy finally said, too loudly. He made an audible sound of frustration and lowered his voice. "A few more weeks, that's all. I can't promise you any sooner."

Will started to edge away, but not before he heard Percy add, "I love you, too."

He was so screwed.


	52. Cheez Whiz(and author's note)

There was an obsession with Cheez Whiz circling around the cape. Will couldn't open the cupboard without finding eight or nine cans of it, the kind that you could spray directly into your mouth if you were so inclined. He was surprised that nobody had skin riddled with acne from all the grease, preservatives, and fat packed into the metal cylinders and consumed on a daily basis.

At Will's house, there rarely was any junk food. Good food, yes-his stepmom's bacon-and-potato casserole would always make his mouth water, and Kayla baked cookies nearly every weekend with names like Death By Fudge and Peanut Chunk Supremes-but no store-bought, chemical-laden, good-old _junk_ food. Potato chips? Forget it. Mallowmars? Only on vacation.

Cheez Whiz? Might as well be devil spawn.

"It's just not healthy," he tried to explain to Frank, for the hundredth time. "As an occasional snack, sure, but every day? It heightens your sodium levels, fills your bloodstream with soluble fats, increases your risk of a heart attack or cancer-" Here, he stopped.

Frank arched an eyebrow at him(everybody could do it now, thanks to Nico's teaching).

Will handed the Cheez Whiz over without further lecture.

_a/n-"what on earth have I just read?", you're probably asking. "what is this chapter that simply wasted my time?"  
Or, y'know, maybe you don't care and have decided that this is the final straw for you, you're going to stop reading this pointless story. I don't know, whatever. :)  
Well, if you do care-this is shameless filler while I work on the last few chapters of Gone. Rather than drag on forever(there are roughly eight or nine chapters left), I've decided to split the remaining story in two and post it as a whole. If you're interested in seeing a sequel, please let me know by commenting on the last chapter! If not, you guys have been a really great audience and I can't wait until my next PJO/HoO fanfic is ready! I hope that you check it out(unabashedly toots own horn).  
xoxo-nerice_


	53. my throat won't keep down much longer

_a/n-here goes nothing, guys. Hope the formatting is all good!_

-/-

"What do you do when you know that someone you know is doing something wrong, but you don't know them well enough that you're sure it would be the right thing to confront them about it?" Will asked, pressing the phone closer to his ear.

On the other end, Michael was silent for a moment.

"What the blinking hell are you talking about, Will?"

"Nothing. Never mind."

He hung up.

-/-

Percy reached up onto the mantelpiece, pulling a silver box from between a taxidermied hawk and a large, black vase with a cork in it.

"Ah, the ceremonial tinder box," Annabeth moaned, but there was a lot more laugh in it than actual dread. "Well-used by the Jackson family for years-"  
"Hey, this was my dad's," Percy defended himself, crouching in front of the fireplace. "I'm honoring a time-old tradition. I was probably conceived in front of this fireplace."

Will and Nico, both sitting on the floor, quickly edged back as far as the ring formed by the two couches would allow.

"That's disgusting," Hazel said with feeling, sliding off of the couch to sit next to Nico. He gave her a reassuring pat on the knee.

"He's lying, Haz. His birthday's in August-it's not possible for that to have happened."

"I'm not lying," Percy said indignantly. "I was just born freakishly early."

"He was born in front of this fireplace, too," Annabeth said sardonically. Will snorted.

Nico reached for the matches. "Hey, Perce-let me light it this year."

Percy clutched at his heart. "Dude, it's the first indoor fire of the year. I can't just hand it off to my baby co-"

Nico glared at him.

Percy handed over the matches. "Well, fine. But be careful. And do it with ceremony, for God's sake."

Nico shrugged and struck a match, going to toss it onto the small pile of tinder already mounded in the grate.

"NO!" Percy shouted, actually tackling him. The lit match fell onto the braided rug, where a quick-thinking Hazel stomped it out before it got out of hand.

"What the hell?" Nico protested.

"PERCY!" Annabeth cried. "You almost burned down the cape!"

"I said to do it _with ceremony_!" Percy said, ignoring their protests. "You have to go _slowly_, Nico, and have _reverence_ for the moment." He gestured with his hands as he spoke, patting the air like it was a Chihuahua.

It's official, Will thought. I live among mad men.

-/-

July came, and Jason's birthday right on its heels.

Nico was inordinately obsessed with it, dragging Will to all kinds of shops and even down into the city to find the right gift for Jason. "Thalia won't be there," he explained, between the music store and the IHop, "so I want it to be really cool for him. Because, y'know, his life kind of sucks, too."

Will hadn't been able to argue with that, but he had put his foot down when Nico tried to buy his cousin a $500 IHop gift card. "No one," Will said emphatically, "can eat that many pancakes."

So Nico settled on a football t-shirt and a portable hibachi, and Will bought the guy a contact lens kit in the hopes that he would take the hint and stop wearing those hipster glasses, and then they went to Party World for some cheesy-themed unrecyclables to decorate the gable with.

"The Invincible Hulk, or Elmo?" Nico asked, holding up two stacks of napkins as if they were on a game show and he was expecting Will to Choose His Prize.

"How am I supposed to know? You're his cousin," Will said. "Choose a theme that fits his personality."

"Well, we seem to be out of Raging Dork plates today," Nico deadpanned. "And chances for Prying Asshole are slim, as well."

Will wordlessly selected a Spongebob Squarepants banner and held it up.

They dissolved into laughter, and didn't reassemble themselves for quite some time.

Finally, loaded down with Superman plates, napkins, banners, and balloons, Will and Nico left the store.

"So," Will said, in what he hoped was a casual tone as they crossed the parking lot, "how are things between you and Percy? I mean, are you guys together, or what?"

Nico shot him a look. "You're kidding, right?" His voice was laced with disbelief and heavy sarcasm, eyes dark in a way that screamed _if this is a joke, it's _not_ funny_. The enormous idiocy of Will's opening statement hung between them, too dumb to even be mocked.

Will gave up on his fleeting attempt at subtlety. "Okay, listen to me-I didn't mean to overhear this, but . . ." He went on to tell Nico about Percy's phone conversation as they packed the plastic bags into Will's white rental car and got in. Nico listened, with an unruffled look on his face, even as Will stressed the _oddity_ and the _fishiness_ of the whole situation.

"He could have been talking to his mom," Nico finally offered. Will pulled out of the parking space and drove out of the lot, making a face.

"But he specifically said that he hadn't told her . . . whatever it was that he hasn't told us." he protested. "I know he's your cousin and all, but he's weird. There's this vibe about that guy that just-"

"Just what?" Nico cut him off sharply.

"He's hiding something," Will retorted. "I don't trust him."

Nico gave a short, unpleasant laugh. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize that we'd suddenly been thrown into an episode of _Survivor_. The hell do you mean, you don't _trust_ him? What is he going to do, screw us out of our marshmallows?"

Will bristled at the other boy's overly defensive tone. "I'm saying that Percy is obviously keeping secrets from all of us," he said tightly. "Doesn't that bother you?"

"He's allowed his secrets," Nico snapped. "Let it be." He was totally shutting Will down, not even considering . . . whatever it was that Will was considering. He wasn't acting open-minded at all, really; as though he just wanted Will to shut up and forget about the whole topic, as if he was on Percy's side, as if, maybe-

A thought occurred to Will. "You know, don't you?" he accused.

"_What_?" Nico's face was a mixture of disbelief and-Will wasn't imagining it, he wasn't-guilt. He tried to hide it by twisting in his seat to glare out the window, but Will knew better.

"What's he's hiding-you know, and you aren't telling me!" Will banged the steering wheel for emphasis.

"Jesus, will you listen to yourself?" Nico growled defensively. "You sound like some whacked-out conspiracy-"  
" 'It could have been his mother',", Will mocked, in an imitation of Nico's voice. "When I'd just freaking told you that he mentioned his mother. You're covering for him!"

"You're acting crazy," Nico retorted acidly. "I just don't want you talking shit about Percy."

Will snarled, "Bullshit. You think I don't know when you're lying? God, when are you going to finally stop hero-worshipping this guy?"

"This has nothing to do with hero-worship!" Nico practically yelled. "You're being ridiculous!"

"And you aren't?!" Will had to pull over to the side of the road; he was getting too angry to see straight, let alone drive. He threw the car into park and unbuckled his seat belt, whirling to face Nico. "Every time I bring up Percy, you-"

"I _what_?!" Nico shouted. "I love my cousin? How _terrible_ of me!"  
"You fly off the handle if I so much as sneeze in his direction!" Will yelled. "You're so overprotective of him that it makes me think you're still in love with him!"

"He's seen me through more tough times than you can imagine," Nico hissed angrily, eyes darkening. "You've no idea about him-about any of us!"

"Maybe because you won't tell me a fucking thing!" Will snarled.

They stared at each other, tense. Will timed the seconds by the rise and fall of their breath; syncing into eerie unison after only a few seconds. It was strange, how they could connect over something as small as that, and still not line up right when it came to the big issues, the Life ones.

His eyes fell to the fingers of Nico's right hand, curled so tightly around the handle of the car door that his typically olived skin was white at the knuckles, and he realized the boy was about to run.

So Will took a deep breath and calmed himself down, ignoring the part of him that was still raging with fury and jealous and a heck of a lot of other unpleasant emotions that were mostly Nico's fault.

"Let's back up," he said, just as Nico blurted out, "He's seeing someone."

Will froze, his campaign to take the high-and-mighty road crumbling at once. "Sorry . . . _what_?"

Nico sighed, releasing the door handle, visibly giving up. "He's seeing someone. I don't know who, so don't ask me. He met her while he was . . . away."

Will blinked. "Why the hell would he do that? I mean, if he already had a girlfriend-"

"I don't know," Nico said shortly. "I asked, but-I mean, he obviously didn't want to talk about it."

Obviously. Will had to bite his tongue to keep the sarcastic reply from slipping off of it. Percy was a cheater. What a big effing surprise. It was getting harder by the second to keep his opinion of Percy higher than ground level, and Nico's staunch support of his cousin did not help matters any.

"That's all I could get out of him. I'm sure that there's-I mean, he wouldn't just-" Nico's voice broke, and he shook his head wordlessly. His eyes flashed up to Will's. "You can't tell this to anyone. You absolutely can't tell."

"I-you-how can you ask me to do that?" Will growled. "That isn't remotely-I mean, God, I _like_ Annabeth."

"So do I," Nico mumbled, even though it sounded more like a lie than any of the falsehoods he'd tried to feed Will. "But Percy made me swear, and now I have to make you swear."

Will stared at him, and it occurred to him that he hated Percy Jackson.

"Fine," he ground out, and started the car again.


	54. Nico

Jason's birthday was less than a rousing success.

Sure, it started out great. Piper proved to be an amazing baker, pouring her heart and soul into a Superman-shaped marble cake with jellybean eyes and black licorice hair. Leo made fajitas and fried enough hamburg to fill a thousand tortillas. Will and Nico, in an effort to pretend that they hadn't been fighting in the car not twenty minutes before, elected to string the chain of S-shields around the living room and pin the life-sized cutout of Superman to the wall opposite the door, where Jason would see it when he walked in.

Percy and Renya, whose presence had never been explained to Will, set paper plates, napkins, and forks on the fold-out table near the door, while Frank carefully laid out snack foods and finger rolls.

"Annabeth's distracting Jason at the cape," Piper said to the room at large. "But we still only have about a half hour to get everything ready; so work quickly, everyone. Hazel, set up the gifts by Jason's chair-Leo, something's burning in the kitchen-and Nico, stop scowling at Will because your relationship problems have no place in Jason's birthday party. Let's make this great, people!"

Ten minutes later, while Piper was still frantically plastering frosting on Superman's sides, and Will was adjusting the _Happy Birthday, Jason!_ banner for the umpteenth time under Reyna's critical eye, Jason and Annabeth walked in.

Leo saw them first. "_Sorpresa_, dude!" he called out, juggling a crock pot of vienna sausages and a platter of egg rolls. He set the dishes on the food table and engulfed Jason in a hug. "You're early, but that's fine."

"Wh-" Reyna turned to look. Piper shrieked in dismay. Hazel clapped a hand over her mouth.

"Surprise!" everyone chorused clumsily. Will waved his hands dispassionately in a "surprise"-y type way.

Jason gave an uncomfortable smile. Annabeth made a slashing gesture across her throat.

"What? What's going on?" Piper asked, confused.

"There's . . . a girl outside," Jason said slowly. "Um-she's asking for you, Percy." His face suggested that this wasn't a good thing.

Percy's own face was pale as he slowly eased past Jason, avoiding Annabeth's eyes.

Nico's hand slipped into Will's, and squeezed hard, their earlier dispute clearly forgotten.

Piper clapped her hands together. "Um, okay-who wants cake?"

Jason rose his hand at once, and she gratefully seized on the opportunity to haul the boy into the other room. Everyone else stayed where they were, frozen in the middle of party preparations, looking at Annabeth.

"She said she was his girlfriend," she said hollowly.

-/-

Will found Nico on the beach, which wasn't really surprising.

"There's no one to wait for, you know," he said, kicking off his shoes and sitting down next to him. "Percy's inside, getting hell from both of his girlfriends."

"I wish you didn't hate him," Nico mumbled. He had his arms folded on his upraised knees, chin resting on his forearms. When he spoke, his head moved up and down in exaggerated motion, like a cartoon.

"I don't hate him," Will lied. "I've never hated anyone in my life."

Nico glowered at him.

"What? I'm an easygoing guy," Will said lightly. "Why would I have a reason to hate Percy?"

Nico regarded him for another minute, then glanced away. "You're a terrible liar," he muttered. "Percy is better."

"Yeah, well, Percy is better at a lot of things," Will bemoaned, and kicked the sand.

"I see how easygoing you are," Nico observed dryly. "I could hardly sense the barely contained jealousy in that remark."

Will elbowed him. "Shut up. This is all your fault, anyway."

"Yes. Percy's actions on an island two hundred miles away are my fault," Nico rolled his eyes and tightened his arms around his knees. "Whatever, Will."

"It's your fault that I'm anxious," Will explained, trying for a softer tone. "Because Percy isn't just some former crush. I can't ask you to stop loving him, because he's your family. You're right-he was there for you throughout your life. And me? I'm just an intern that you met in a waiting room." He shrugged. "I can't compete."

"You're-that's-" Nico stuttered. "I mean-it isn't a competition."

Will laughed. "Really? Because you didn't pull away from Percy. You didn't shove Percy off your bed. You didn't tell Percy that your life is none of his business."

Nico's cheeks were red. "You aren't being fair."

Will shook his head, still smiling; smiling in the manically _un_-happy way of someone who's just plain had enough. "That's the awful thing, isn't it? Your parents, and your kindergarten teachers, and your siblings-they're all obsessed with keeping things 'fair', with being 'fair'. But it doesn't really matter how many times you share your fire truck with little Johnny, or give your sister the last Oreo-it's always going to be you that's giving, giving, giving, and you never get to play with the fucking fire truck and you never have the last Oreo, because when people ask you to be fair, they're really just asking you to roll over for them."

He took a deep breath. "So, no. I'm not being _fair_, Nico. I'm asking you to be fair. Be fair to me."

"What do you want from me?" Nico asked, echoing their first conversation about this. "You want me to be your boyfriend? Or you just want me to roll over and let you do whatever you want?" He blushed, no doubt regretting his slightly risque choice of words.

Will blushed, too, knotting his fingers between his knees. "I don't know. I just hate you comparing me to him. I hate you looking at him. I hate that you ever liked him, because, frankly, he's a douche."

"In your oh-so-unbiased opinion," Nico said dryly. "Here's some advice-don't ask for something before you know what it is that you want."

"I want-" Will couldn't finish. What he wanted was still that nameless, formless concatenation that frequented his daydreams and hid in the back of his mind when he tried to define it. He couldn't help but feel like all of it-Nico and his future and his present-was all one big snarl that had to be solved at the same time, or never at all. And then, once it had been solved, he would know what it was that he really wanted.

"I want to know what you want," he finally said, which was the closest to the truth that he could get. "I want you to stop putting the onus on me all the time. I'm not the only one who decides things in this relationship, you know."

"What relationship?" Nico mocked. "Our 'y'know'?"

"Screw you," Will snapped, losing patience. "Just screw you, Nico. You want to know what I want? I want you to act like a normal fucking person and just ask me out already. Or let me ask you out-I don't care. Just quit this-this-this-" He waved his hands around, unable to come up for a suitable word. "Everything. It just feels like you're messing with me all the damn time. You call me, but you're hung up on someone else. You get over him, but you still won't go out with me. You tell me to come to the cape, and then you spend the whole time acting like you'd rather I wasn't here. What the hell do _you_ want?"

Nico looked as though he'd just been slapped.

Will stared at him, waiting for a reply. Waiting, but the only sounds were the waves, whispering their goodbyes to the beach as they retreated into low tide.

-/-

"You just need to give him-" Hazel began, but Will had had enough.

"I'm done with giving him fucking time, Haz," he snapped. "I gave him a whole summer-hell, I gave him longer than that. We've been playing this fun little game since last January-let's face it, if Nico was really interested in me, he would've let me in by now."

Hazel slapped him.

Will, shocked, cradled his face and stared at her as if she'd just claimed she could raise the dead.

"You're supposed to know him better than that," she said angrily. "You're supposed to be the one who saves him, Will."

Will thought back to the time, weeks ago, when he'd stood on the steps of his father's hospital and came to the same conclusion. He was supposed to save Nico, help Nico, blah blah blah.

He'd been so wrong.

"I do know him better than that," he said determinedly. "I know him well enough to see what even you don't-he doesn't need saving. He just needs to get the hell over himself and grow up, and I can't make him do that."

He swung his duffel bag onto his shoulder.

" . . . I can't make him do anything."

Widows who'd lost their husbands to the sea often spent their lives staring out at the waves that swallowed their happiness. Sometimes, in an effort to gain back what they had lost, they dove into the brine for themselves; gave their bodies over to become swollen, pale, bloated and salt-crusted. Nico had walked that path, however reluctantly-he'd become one of the wispy shadow-stories that Bianca used to tell him at night, under covers with a flashlight shone into her face to scare him more.

He'd become lovelorn, and it disgusted him.

Jason came up beside him, sneakers crunching over the newly frost-crusted sand. "It's almost November, Nic," he said. "We've got to leave."

Nico wondered when he'd broke. It wasn't for Percy, scrabbling to catch the last threads of his rapidly unraveling relationship; it wasn't for Jason, or Hazel, who both looked at him as though he was already in his coffin, six feet down, no one hears you scream, boy. It wasn't even for Will, was it? Not really.

Maybe he'd just lost it for himself. He'd had enough. He quit. He didn't want to deal with dealing with shit. He was tired of being himself; he wanted to be happy. Happy like he'd been when it was just him and Will, with Jason and Frank and Hazel down the lane to visit, and no Percy, no dozens of teenagers wreaking havoc and ruining furniture cushions like over-excited puppy dogs.

_Just you and me in a cabin by the sea._

Either way, Will was gone, and Nico would have to get over it. Better luck next time.

"Nico?" Jason sounded hesitant, a little nervous. "Dude, are you crying?"

Nico wiped his face on the sleeve of his sweatshirt and shook his head. "No." He paused. "Hey, Jase?"

"Yeah?"  
"Are you ever going to tell me what Hazel's hiding?"

Jason's ears turned bright scarlet. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said woodenly.

Nico stuffed his hands in his pockets, hunching his shoulders against the fall chill. "I've had enough secrets for one year, thanks."

Jason folded his arms. "I really think that you should talk to _her_ about it."

"She's in Rhode Island. I'd have to call." Nico kicked at the sand moodily and shot Jason a sideways glance. "C'mon," he pressured. "It can't be as bad as Percy's was."

Jason shrugged. "Look, she's going to be seriously pissed. I'm not supposed to tell anyone-you especially. Hazel could get into a lot of trouble."

"Jason."

"All right, all right!" He threw up his hands, surrendering, giving in like Piper did when she realized that Jason wasn't going back to Arizona with them, wasn't going to leave Nico alone; not then, not ever. At least she'd extracted a promise to call this time.

"This wasn't just some random coincidence," Jason said. "We-Hazel and I-have been looking for you, and the other cousins, for a long time. Like, pretty much since we found each other."

Nico scrunched up his face in confusion. "Why? Why does Hazel care about me?"

There on the beach, witnessed by the whistling wind and crashing waves, between the sea that stole Percy and the cape that took him back, Jason told him the story. He told and told and told until the words flowed empty from his lips, empty and cold as the beach once the sun set.

When he was done, Nico had nothing to say. He hugged his sweatshirt around his body and turned to face the ocean one more time.

"Are you crying?" Jason asked again.

Nico whispered, for only the salt-drenched waves of his old nemesis to hear, "I have a sister. I have two sisters."

And, lower, so that even he couldn't make out the faint sounds his lips formed, he added, "And I'm in love with Will."

The sea, it mocked him as it always did, its briny face laughing at his troubles, reaching arms of waves slapping the beach before him in calculated taunts. _Be careful_, it whooshed. _Be careful what you wish for_.

Nico closed his ears to it, this time. He didn't wish. "Let's go," he said to Jason.

Jason smiled widely. "Awesome."


	55. Epilogue(that stupid sappy cliched end)

Three years, a handful of months, a collection of long, snapshot-photo days.

Jason emailed Piper from every overcrowded, hipster-infested coffee shop with _Free Wi-Fi!_ that they encountered. She never replied. He watched Nico tap his fingers on sticky tables and write scrawled bits of nothing in a notebook they picked up at a gas station; Nico never emailed anyone.

While Jason snuck away to call home on the payphone outside of some crappy roadside motel that looked as likely to eat them alive as give them shelter for the night, he felt Nico's eyes on him through the flower-patterned curtains of the room, even though the boy had supposedly been fast asleep when he left. Nico was anxious, those days, empty in a way that he hadn't been when Jason first found him by the sea. He refused to be alone, in the same way that he used to refuse company, and he seemed to be hanging on the coattails of Jason's sunshine the way he used to cling to Will. Only, Jason wasn't Will-he couldn't carry Nico on forever, with endless patience and a never-ending supply of . . . of what? Love? Jason used to think that Will loved Nico; he wasn't so sure, now.

All he knew was that he was reaching the end of his rope. He loved Nico, yes-but he loved his friends, too; and he missed the fractured family that he'd given up so that Nico wouldn't have to be alone.

Jason drove-on tedious, field-bound roads, and in hectic city centers; past tiny country stores and huge retail outlets. They stopped whenever they were hungry, or tired, or saw an interesting landmark or bizarre local fair. In one town, too small to have a name, they saw an entire festival dedicated to some obscure brand of soda. Jason and Nico drank can after can and, high on sugar, played ring toss games and rode the minuture ponies, even if Jason's feet grazed the ground and Nico couldn't stop laughing. Some girl threaded flowers through their hair, which just made the whole thing more laughable. That was a good day.

Jason was so keyed up after that, he drove all night, sneaking rabbit-glances at Nico, who was curled up inside his favorite sweatshirt and zonked out in the passenger seat. That was one of his favorite memories; the black road and neon lines swallowed under his headlights, with nothing but hushed silence inside the car, soothing the whispers in his heart that he was running away, that he was helping Nico run away, that he wasn't acting responsible at all.

The thing about being runaways is, you have to have something you're running _from_, or else someone chasing you; and no one missed Jason and Nico. There were no news reports of police searching for two teenage boys in a beat-up blue Taurus, no worried phone calls from parents or teachers-it was as though the two of them now existed in a world completely separate, a world where they didn't exist at all.

Jason couldn't say that he hated it. It was nice to feel special, separate. It was nice to monopolize his cousin's time, as if making up for all of the years they'd never been family. Jason didn't really mind not being missed; and maybe, despite his doubts, he wouldn't want to go back to his old life after all. Maybe he'd stay on like this, in a car with Nico, forever.

But then, Nico. Nico was different. Nico was empty again. Sure, he smiled and he had fun; he had lots of fun. And some days were good. But there was a difference between being happy and being whole, and Nico wasn't whole. When the happiness evaporated like the carbon fizzing out of obscure soda, Nico's eyes became blank; not sad, just blank. And that was worse-and Jason wasn't supposed to be making him _worse_, he was supposed to be helping him get _better_. He just didn't know how.

He kept driving.

Winter came. Nico's birthday crept up on them like a monster under the bed; and he surprised Jason by saying, "I want to go back to the cape."

So they did. They went back to the gray sky, and the blackened waves, and the creaky, drafty, worn out cape house that was still one little dirt path away from the cliff-crest and the gable. Jason pulled his Taurus into the same gravel-covered driveway, bumper inches from the peeling porch. A white car was already parked on the lawn.

Jason turned off the car, and they sat in silence for a moment. That white car sat between them like a huge, 1998 model elephant.

"What is wrong with you," Nico said softly, "that you have to always bring change into my life?"

"I thought that was my role," Jason said, watching his cousin's face for any sign of emotion. It was carefully blank. "You wouldn't ask for help, so I did it for you."

"I don't need help," Nico said automatically. His fists were clenched around his sweatshirt, and his cheeks were the grayish white they got when he was feeling sick.

Jason reached over him and opened the passenger door. "Then prove it, bro. Go face him."

Nico swallowed. Then he glared. Then, finally, all-too-slowly, he unbuckled his seat belt and eased out of the car. The wind gusted around, slamming the door shut and turning his hair into a black clown's wig of wild curls. He almost had to physically fight it as he made his way up the steps of the porch.

Jason watched him, from inside the warmth and relative quiet of the car. He felt like he was witnessing the end scene of a movie, with the turbulent sea in the background, with the white cape looming over tiny, dark Nico in the fore. This was the dramatic homecoming, or something like it.

The door opened. Jason could just make out the blur of yellow hair, orange shirt, black jeans. Like a human candy corn, he thought, and smirked.

Nico and Will talked. He saw their hands moving; Nico's quickly, as he spoke, miming his words like he did when he was excited; Will's jerkily, fidgeting with his shirt sleeve, his collar, his hair. He could barely hear the tones of their voices over the wind, which lulled and roared in nearly equal terms.

Jason found that he was nervously clutching the steering wheel; he forced himself to let go, relax. It wasn't _his_ relationship on the line.

More talking. More gesturing. Had it been hours, or just minutes? Jason craned his neck, trying to see further, see more. It was hard-the images kept blurring as soon as he held still, making him think that he needed to get new glasses. Again.

It was pretty hard to mistake what happened next though, glasses or not. The two figures moved in sync, fast enough that, in Jason's eyes, one second they were standing on either side of the threshold, and the next, their colors were fiercely entwined in a hug. Nico no longer stood alone.

Jason's sigh of relief was audible, and he finally did relax, slumping back in his seat and leaning his head back onto the headrest.

Will dragged Nico inside, still not releasing him.

The door closed.

Jason waited a moment to see if Nico would come out howling; when he didn't, he took the liberty of starting the car up again and pulling out of the driveway. He'd stop at a gas station, he decided. Get some gas, and a few candy bars, and then head south, to Arizona and Leo and Piper. Yeah-he could definitely use some time with Piper. He hoped the offer to stay with her family was still good.

As for Nico, well-Jason would check in on him later. He didn't think that Nico needed him anymore, because in the end, Jason hadn't had to fix him. He'd just had to deliver him to the person who could.

"Does this mean you love me?" Will asked, eons later.

Nico fiddled with the guitar pick around his neck.

"We'll see," he said.

Will groaned.

_(seriously, it's the end now)(really, guys, it is)_  
_a/n-if anyone's interested, I've started this Jasico fic called the Winter Soldier and it's basically a Captain America AU. I feel kind of trashy touting it at the end of a Solangelo story :D :D. I wish I had more Solangelo to post but seriously this story took everything out of me. Maybe in a few(more)months but who really cares? Anywhooooo-thanks, everyone, for reading!_


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